Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have announced a lawsuit against the administration of President Donald Trump over his move to halt payment of cost-sharing reduction subsidies, or CSRs, to insurers on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges.

Groups representing physicians, hospitals and patients came out largely in opposition to President Donald Trump’s executive order to encourage the use of insurance plans which don’t comply with Affordable Care Act (ACA) regulations on benefits and covering people with pre-existing conditions.

Cost-sharing reduction subsidies, or CSRs, paid to insurers in exchange for keeping out-of-pocket costs low for lower-income Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchange enrollees will end, HHS announced Thursday night, with the agency saying it couldn’t legally continue making the payments.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on the morning of Oct. 12 to ease rules on small businesses buying health insurance. With Congress failing to act on Republican promises to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Trump will make the unilateral move to reconfigure federal regulations.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, were brought to the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) conference in Los Angeles to have a political-style debate on healthcare policy, but ended up agreeing on where short-term efforts may go now that repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) failed to pass.

Don Rucker, MD, head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) said his agency has been focused on improving usability and interoperability of electronic health records, adding that while blockchain technology may provide some interesting capabilities but it’s too soon to issue regulations on it.

A study published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth includes a list of five recommendations for improving mHealth utilization for adolescents with chronic conditions. The researched aimed at improving disease self-management in adolescents by utilizing mHealth technology for real-time care.

To call the last few months a busy time for healthcare lobbyists in Washington, D.C. would be quite an understatement. Rather than dwell on the failed attempts at repealing the Affordable Care Act, the Medical Group Management Association’s (MGMA) senior vice president of government affairs, Anders Gilberg, will look ahead to more immediate regulatory concerns and longer-term hopes for “lasting reform.”