What will be DOGE’s impact on CMS?

In a statement today, CMS confirmed that Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been given access to CMS payment systems: CMS has two senior Agency veterans – one focused on policy and one focused on operations – who are leading the collaboration with DOGE, including ensuring appropriate access to CMS systems…

Prior authorization and opioid abuse

An interesting article by Cochran et al. (2017) examines whether health plan prior authorization rules can help prevent opioid abuse.  The authors use Pennsylvania Medicaid data from 2010 to 2012.  The data included both fee-for-service and managed care enrollees. The authors measured opioid abuse based on diagnosis codes for opioid use disorder (304.0, 304.00, 304.01,…