This week, the Trump Administration released their federal fiscal year 2021 budget blueprint, which outlines the President’s policy priorities for the next budget year beginning on October 1, 2020. These documents define the Administration’s plans for the federal government, but also serve as the opening gambit to negotiations with Congress. In a record-breaking $4.8 trillion…
Read More »The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data on Thursday, finding that U.S. life expectancy at birth slightly increased from 78.6 years to 78.7 years. The slight increase was the first since 2014 when the U.S. life expectancy had been declining, largely due to suicides and drug overdoses. The latest data available…
Read More »U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams recently issued a report on smoking cessation, the 34th tobacco-related Surgeon General report published since 1964. In 1990, the Surgeon General issued the report, The Health Benefits of Smoking Cessation. The latest report summarizes the latest evidence on the health benefits of smoking cessation, including recent scientific evidence on the…
Read More »The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently launched a new initiative, “Active People, Healthy Nation,” with a goal of helping 27 million Americans become more physically active by 2027. The initiative uses five steps to coordinate actions to achieve its goal through supporting physical activity initiatives at the national, state, and local…
Read More »This week, Congress approved final federal appropriations packages for Fiscal Year 2020, which officially began on October 1, 2019. Totaling $1.4 trillion, all of the various appropriations bills were bundled into two separate “minibus” packages – one is for most domestic programs and priorities (plus international assistance) and the other is for national security and…
Read More »The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans on Wednesday struck down the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, ruling on a 2-1 vote that the coverage requirement was unconstitutional after Congress in 2017 eliminated the tax penalty that was intended to enforce it. Despite ruling against a core component of the…
Read More »The U.S. Senate recently confirmed Stephen Hahn, M.D. as the 24th Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Hahn was confirmed by the Senate on a 72-18 vote. Hahn was previously a professor of radiation oncology and the chief medical officer of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and had not…
Read More »On Wednesday, the Trump Administration issued a final rule tightening Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) processes in which states can waive a requirement that able-bodied adults without children work at least 20 hours per week. Under current law, able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWD) are individuals 18 to 49 who are not elderly, women who are…
Read More »Two notable actions related to electronic cigarettes occurred this week, both on the state and federal levels. We detail these actions below: AG Becerra Alleges JUUL Labs Unlawfully Targeted Minors On Monday, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced the State of California has filed a lawsuit in the Alameda County Superior Court against JUUL Labs,…
Read More »The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released the proposed federal rule, “Medicaid Financing and Accountability Regulation (MFAR)” which would broadly expand federal oversight of Medicaid supplemental payments and recast current rules and regulations governing how supplemental payments are structured, financed, and distributed. According to CMS, the proposed rule is an effort…
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