The Obama administration is requesting a 52 percent budgetary increase for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT next year to support interoperability, “optimization” of health IT, consumer engagement in care and President Obama’s new Precision Medicine Initiative.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has unveiled an "Obamacare Repeal Act" that would repeal the act "as if such Act had not been enacted," according to the National Review Online. 

The White House announced that it is pumping $215 million into federal health and science agencies so they can develop infrastructure that allows data to flow between medical clinics to labs that sequence the human genome and gather other data, reports Politico.

The Congressional movement to eliminate the 2.3 percent medical device tax is misguided and may do more harm than good, according to an editorial in The New York Times.  

After many assurances over the past year that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) want to relieve some of the regulatory burden providers face, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) this week announced an aggressive plan to move to pay-for-performance rather than volume.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee published a discussion draft of new legislation, called the 21st Century Cures Act, that would promote the development of new medical advances for drugs and medical devices, reports Roll Call. 

An industry coalition representing some of the largest healthcare systems and insurers is supporting a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plan to accelerate the movement towards value-based care, reports The New York Times. 

The House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce has released a 393-page draft document, called the 21st Century Cures Act, which contains a wide array of provisions that seek to advance medicine—including those directly related to health IT.