The president last week signed legislation delaying through March a 21% Medicare payment cut for physicians. Among other provisions, the "Temporary Extension Act," H.R. 4691, extends through March the 2009 "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's" COBRA continuation coverage and premium assistance for recently unemployed workers. The Senate voted 78-19 last Wednesday to send the bill to the president.
FCC seeks comments on AHA waiver request
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is accepting comments through April 2 on an AHA request for a blanket waiver to permit hospitals seeking accreditation from The Joint Commission to use amateur radio operators who are hospital employees to transmit communications on behalf of the hospital as part of emergency preparedness drills. Hospitals accredited by The Joint Commission must prepare an emergency operations plan setting forth how the hospital will communicate during emergencies, establish back-up communications links to communicate essential information if primary communication systems fail, and test their emergency operations plans twice annually. The AHA requested the blanket waiver last month as an interim solution to prevent the FCC and hospitals from having to prepare, file and process a raft of waiver requests while the FCC prepares a proposed rule that would allow amateur radio operators who are hospital employees to participate in drills.
For more information, visit www.fcc.gov, go to the March 3 "Daily Digest" and click on "DA-10-365A.doc"
Moody's asks for more liquidity data
Moody's Investors Service is asking non-profit organizations whose debt it rates to disclose additional information regarding the liquidity of their investment holdings. The additional disclosure will be requested on an annual basis, beginning with data reported for fiscal year 2009. "In assessing the liquidity of Moody's not-for-profit hospital borrowers, we intend to make use of new and traditional ratios to quantify liquidity for an individual borrower and to compare liquidity across borrowers," the credit rating agency said in a report on the change. It said the new data will allow it to report consistent values for the percentage of cash and investments that can be liquidated within a month, a year or longer, and to better analyze complex investment strategies.
HHS wants more transparency from insurers
Meeting last week with several large health insurers, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asked them to post on the Internet information on their rate increases and how they justify them. Participants included representatives from WellPoint, Aetna, CIGNA HealthCare, UnitedHealth Group and the Health Care Service Corp. In a briefing with reporters, Sebelius said HHS has no direct authority to deny a rate increase or return premium dollars to policy holders, but can "shine a bright light" on the issue by calling for greater transparency "until we get comprehensive reform with different rules of the road established."
