Committee advances bills to expand site-neutral payment cuts, delay Medicaid DSH cuts, add reporting requirements for 340B hospitals, among other health care provisions

The House Energy and Commerce Committee today voted 49-0 to advance H.R. 3561, as amended, legislation that would impose billions of dollars a year in additional site-neutral payment reductions to services provided in off-campus hospital outpatient departments. In a statement shared with the committee today and letter sent yesterday with other hospital groups, AHA said the proposed reductions fail to account for the fundamental differences between HOPDs and other ambulatory care sites, would exacerbate Medicare’s chronic failure to cover the cost of care and threaten beneficiary access to quality care. 
 
In addition to the site-neutral cuts, H.R. 3561 would:

• delay for two years $8 billion in annual Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital payment reductions scheduled to begin in October, as urged by the AHA and supported by a bipartisan group of over 230 representatives;
• modify hospital price transparency requirements; and
• require mandatory reporting with respect to certain health-related ownership information, which AHA called overly burdensome and redundant to other reporting.

The committee also passed, by a vote of 29-22, H.R. 3290, as amended, legislation opposed by AHA and other national hospital and hospital pharmacist associations that would impose onerous reporting requirements on hospitals participating in the 340B drug pricing program.