The U.S. Senate will be on break until June 3, but Senate Republican staff are expected to spend the recess drafting its own version of a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Organizations representing hospitals and specialties reacted negatively to an estimate the Affordable Care Act (ACA) replacement passed by House Republicans would result in 23 million fewer people having insurance by 2026.

Reducing funding to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) from $60 million to $38 million, as the Trump administration has proposed, may hamper advancements in interoperability and the goals of 21st Century Cures Act, according to several leading health IT groups.

The Congressional Budget Office has released its updated report on the American Health Care Act (AHCA), saying the Affordable Care Act (ACA) replacement passed by House Republicans would still erase the recent gains in insurance coverage and potentially price less healthy enrollees out of the individual market.

Under President Donald Trump's proposed budget, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will lose $22 million in funding. The 36 percent reduction cuts the $60 million for ONC to $38 million in 2018.

Conservative advocacy groups laid out their priorities for healthcare policy as the Senate crafts its own version of an Affordable Care Act (ACA) replacement, warning against a proposed “auto-enrollment” option to replace the ACA’s penalty for not buying insurance.  

The full fiscal year 2018 budget proposal for HHS would include deep cuts to Medicaid, while making immediate cuts to National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and almost all HHS agencies. 

The proposed single-payer healthcare system being debated in California would come with a $400 billion annual price tag—more than double the state’s annual budget—according to a review released by the California Senate Appropriations Committee.