After an 80-day extension costing taxpayers well over $1 million, the North Carolina House and Senate chambers have finally reached a tentative budget agreement for the price of roughly $22 billion – a fiscally conservative budget considering that spending increased by 3.1 percent which equates to less than the combined growth of population and inflation. For overall budget highlights, you can peruse what my JLF colleagues have to say about it here, here, and here.
Some items of interest in the HHS portion:
Price transparency
State lawmakers began to push for more price transparency when it passed the Health Care Cost Reduction and Price Transparency Act in 2013. Unfortunately, this statute has not been enforced as intended.
Nevertheless, lawmakers have reinstated this transparency measure. The language states that the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) will post on its website total charges and reimbursement data submitted by hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) for their most popular inpatient, surgical, and imaging services:
Accountability
Funds totaling $750,000 over the biennium will be dedicated for establishing the Office of Program Evaluation, Reporting, and Accountability (OPERA). The program will be charged with evaluating whether government programs such as those within the public health sphere effectively quantify service outputs and improve patient health outcomes. OPERA could also justify why expanding Medicaid isn’t necessary if there are existing organizations funded by competitive state grants and federal funds that specifically cater to low-income populations who are uninsured and underinsured.
