Agencies have one year to use all the money. Twenty projects have “spending concerns,” but the state has not publicly expressed worries about the deadline.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is continuing to pay Medicare Advantage (MA) plans more — $76 billion more in 2026 — than if those same patients were enrolled in traditional fee-for-service Medicare. That higher cost comes despite a policy CMS redesigned in 2024 to limit MA plans’ ability to exaggerate patients’ health ...

House negotiators have put two major pharmacy benefit manager provisions in big, “must pass” spending package that’s now speeding toward a vote on the House floor. One provision in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 package would require PBMs to provide employers and other health plan sponsor fiduciaries with detailed prescription drug benefits tracking reports, to help ...

The CEOs of most of the nation’s largest health insurers plan to lay blame for rising healthcare costs on hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and specialty providers during testimony before Congress on Jan. 22. In written testimonies submitted ahead of back-to-back hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the House Ways and Means Committee, the top executives ...

While the conversation at the House E&C Subcommittee hearing this morning was fairly varied, in the early questioning before the Ways and Means Committee, the debate over the Affordable Care Act has been front and center. Ranking Member Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts, said in his opening remarks that the expiry of the enhanced subsidies in the ...

Congressional leaders reached a bipartisan, bicameral health care deal early Tuesday morning they hope lawmakers will pass later this week as part of a four-bill government spending package. Alongside funding for the departments of Defense, Transportation, Labor, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security through Sept. 30, senior appropriators are proposing a crackdown on drug intermediates ...