TGIF

Earlier this week after the Senate passed HR 6, the opioid crisis relief bill, with an amendment, the FEHBlog understood that a conference report reconciling the House and Senate versions of the bill would be forthcoming this week. Not so fast. Press reports indicate that reconciliation negotiations continue. Modern Healthcare states that "Talks are likely to push into the weekend and possibly until Monday."

Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control issued their 41st annual report on the state of the Nation's health.

Special Feature highlights [from the report]:

• Life expectancy at birth decreased for the first time since 1993 by 0.2 years between 2014 and 2015, and then decreased another 0.1 years between 2015 and 2016.
• Between 2000 and 2016, death rates for five of the 12 leading causes of death increased: unintentional injuries, Alzheimer’s disease, suicide, chronic liver disease, and septicemia.
• The age-adjusted death rate for drug overdose in the U.S. increased 72 percent between 2006 and 2016 to 19.8 deaths per 100,000 population in 2016.
• Between 2006 and 2016, the age-adjusted suicide death rate increased 23 percent, from 11.0 to 13.5 deaths per 100,000 resident population
• Among men ages 25–34, death rates for chronic liver disease and cirrhosis increased by an average of 7.9 percent per year during 2006–2016. Among women in the same age group, this increase averaged 11.4 percent per year.

In addition to the focus on mortality, the Health, United States, 2017 Chartbook examines 10-year trends in a broad range of health measures, including:

• Between 2006 and 2016, the birth rate among teenagers ages 15–19 fell by half, from 41.1 to 20.3 live births per 1,000 females — a record low for the United States.
• The percentage of high school students who smoked cigarettes in the past 30 days decreased from 15.8 percent in 2011 to 8.0 percent in 2016. High school students’ use of electronic cigarettes increased more than seven-fold, from 1.5 percent to 11.3 percent.
• In 2016, personal health care expenditures in the U.S. totaled $2.8 trillion — a 4.4 percentage increase from 2015.

Wow. 

HHS's Office for Civil Rights, which enforces the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, entered into separate settlements totaling $999,000 "with Boston Medical Center (BMC), Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) for compromising the privacy of patients’ protected health information (PHI) by inviting film crews on premises to film an ABC television network documentary series, without first obtaining authorization from patients." What's more a major N.Y.C. hospital had settled a practically identical case in April 2016 for 2.2 million. 

The Massachusetts Attorney General which also can enforce these rules settled with UMass healthcare providers in Boston for $230,000 as a result of "improperly access[ing over 15,000] patients’ personal and protected health information for fraudulent purposes, such as opening cell phone accounts and credit card accounts. Whoo boy.