Friday Five: Top 5 healthcare business news items from the MCOL Weekend edition

Every business day, MCOL posts feature stories making news on the business of health care. Here are five we think are particularly important for this week:

Big Pharma Greets Hundreds Of Ex-Federal Workers At The ‘Revolving Door’

Alex Azar’s job hop from drugmaker Eli Lilly to the Trump administration reflects ever-deepening ties between the pharmaceutical industry and the federal government.
Kaiser Health News
Thursday, January 25, 2018

Post-Acute Care Providers Upset Over Being Left Out of Bundled-Payment Test Program

A Trump administration initiative to change how Medicare pays health care providers excludes some of the most enthusiastic backers of a similar Obama-era program – post-acute care providers such as nursing homes and home health agencies.
Morning Consult
Tuesday, January 23, 2018

GAO: CMS Needs More Data to Manage Medicare Opioid Risks

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recommended that CMS should collect additional data on Medicare beneficiary opioid risks, including the number of beneficiaries with high-dose opioid prescriptions, the number of providers that overprescribe opioids, and available health plan data on overprescribing indicators.
HealthPayer Intelligence
Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Congress delays medical device tax for two years

Almost no one got everything they wanted out of the Monday deal to reopen the government — except perhaps medical device companies, who managed to fend off an industry-wide excise tax before the first payments were due.
Stat News
Monday, January 22, 2018

CHIP Renewed For Six Years As Congress Votes To Reopen Federal Government

A brief, partial shutdown of the federal government was resolved Monday, as the Senate and House approved legislation that would keep federal dollars flowing until Feb. 8, as well as fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program for the next six years.
Kaiser Health News
Monday, January 22, 2018

These and more weekly news items on the business of healthcare are featured in the MCOL Weekend edition, along with the MCOL Tidbits, and more, for MCOL Premium level members.