Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on Wednesday that the United States could cut 20% to 30% of its regulations as it seeks to remove obstacles to more energy and mining projects.
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Medicare Agency to End Some Demonstration Projects, Cancel $2 Generic Drug Initiative
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to terminate four demonstration projects at the end of 2025, closing out models affecting primary care, kidney care and healthcare payments in the state of Maryland.
The agency will also make changes to other projects, including dropping a planned initiative that would offer certain generic drugs to Medicare enrollees for $2. CMS said its planned terminations would save nearly $750 million, and an agency official said the projects would affect millions of patients.
The projects were offered through the CMS Innovation Center, a special office that launches and tests new ideas in the agency's programs, which include Medicare and Medicaid. The center's demonstrations are intended to test changes to the agency's typical payments, rules and processes.
CMS said it was ending the projects after a "comprehensive and data-driven review of our model portfolio based on the clear statutory mandate given to the Center by Congress." A CMS official said the terminated projects were deemed unlikely to meet mandated targets of improvements in care quality and/or cost savings.
The Trump administration has said it aims to reduce government spending.
Three of the soon-to-be-terminated models were designed under the prior Trump administration, and one under President Joe Biden, the CMS official said.
The planned terminations may cause pushback from doctors and other healthcare providers that were involved in the projects, though some were expected to halt at the end of 2026. Participation in such models often involves significant planning and investment.
In a statement, CMS Innovation Center Director Abe Sutton said the agency is "committed to supporting healthcare providers in these models to deliver the highest quality care to their patients."
Patients sometimes aren't aware if their doctors or hospitals join demonstration models, since the effects can play out behind the scenes.
The kidney-care project aimed to encourage use of kidney transplants and home-based dialysis, versus getting treatment at dialysis centers. It will require a formal proposal and rule to terminate.
The two primary-care models were called "Primary Care First" and "Making Care Primary," and both aimed to bolster primary care by paying providers in different ways that were intended to reward quality and efficiency. The "Making Care Primary" model launched last July in eight states and was scheduled to go for a decade.
The CMS official said the agency aimed to work with the state of Maryland to transition to a different model for its healthcare payments.
EPA moves to unwind over two dozen US air, water regulations
The Trump administration announced a wave of regulatory rollbacks on Wednesday that included a repeal of emissions limits on power plants, reduced protections for waterways and a rollback of tailpipe pollution curbs in an effort to deliver on President Donald Trump's energy dominance agenda.
The Environmental Protection Agency is moving to unwind 31 Biden-era regulations intended to boost industries ranging from agriculture to electric utilities, oil and petrochemicals and automobiles to align with Trump’s vows to slash red tape, but they are also destined to weaken core environmental U.S. air and water protections.
"Today is the most consequential day of deregulation in American history," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video message posted on X, adding that he is carrying out Trump's day-one executive orders aimed at eliminating red tape for industry.
Zeldin announced earlier on Wednesday that he will reduce the number of waterways that would face regulation under the Clean Water Act in a move urged by the agriculture and petrochemical industries.
He announced later that the agency would reconsider the Biden-era clean power plant rule that seeks to reduce carbon emissions from power plants and roll back greenhouse gas emission standards for heavy- and light-duty vehicles for model year 2027 and later.
Zeldin is already expected to be taking steps to undo a key scientific finding from 2009 that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health that underpins all of the EPA's greenhouse-gas regulations.
https://www.aol.com/news/epa-moves-unwind-over-two-175929361.html
Trump administration begins effort to reverse EPA vehicle rules
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Wednesday it is beginning the effort to reverse the Biden administration's vehicle emissions rules that would force automakers to build a rising number of electric vehicles.
The Trump administration said it would reconsider the EPA's 2024 rules that would cut passenger vehicle fleetwide tailpipe emissions by nearly 50% by 2032 over 2027 levels. The EPA has forecast that between 35% and 56% of new vehicles sold between 2030 and 2032 would be electric in order to comply.
Merck Plans Regulatory Submission For Two-Drug Regime For HIV Infection By Mid-2025
On Wednesday, Merck & Co Inc (NYSE:MRK) announced the presentation of results from two Phase 3 trials of doravirine/islatravir (DOR/ISL) in adults with HIV-1 infection that is virologically suppressed on bictegravir/emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamidei (BIC/FTC/TAF) in trial MK-8591A-052) or antiretroviral therapy (bART) in trial MK-8591A-051.
In both trials, DOR/ISL met the primary efficacy success criterion for non-inferiority to comparator antiretroviral therapies and primary safety objectives at Week 48.
The company released the topline data from both studies in December 2024.
Merck plans to begin submitting applications for marketing authorization to regulatory agencies by mid-2025.
In the trial MK-8591A-052, results for the primary endpoint (HIV-1 RNA ≥50 copies/mL) showed that 1.5% of participants who switched to DOR/ISL had a viral load of ≥50 copies/mL at Week 48, compared to 0.6% on BIC/FTC/TAF.
At Week 48, 91.5% of participants who switched to DOR/ISL maintained viral suppression (HIV-1 RNA <50 copies/mL) compared to 94.2% of participants who continued receiving BIC/FTC/TAF.
In the trial MK-8591A-051, results for the primary endpoint showed that 1.4% of participants who received DOR/ISL had a viral load of ≥50 copies/mL at Week 48, compared to 4.9% on bART.
At Week 48, 95.6% of participants who switched to DOR/ISL maintained viral suppression (HIV-1 RNA <50 copies/mL) compared to 91.9% of participants who continued on bART.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/merck-plans-regulatory-submission-two-173037785.html
More Than 200,000 Government Credit Cards Deactivated: DOGE
by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said more than 200,000 government credit cards linked to a handful of federal agencies were canceled after an audit showed they were not being used.
Last month, DOGE said in a statement that it found more than 4.6 million government credit cards that accounted for more than 90 million unique transactions amounting to more than $40 billion.
On Monday evening, the Elon Musk-led agency said that more than 200,000 were deactivated.
“Weekly Credit Card Update! Pilot program with 16 agencies to audit unused/unneeded credit cards,” DOGE wrote on its X account, adding that “great progress” was made at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of the Interior.
Noting the 4.6 million credit card discovery last month, DOGE wrote that there is “still more work to do.” The post didn’t say what DOGE will target next.
In February’s statement, DOGE provided details about what agencies are using credit cards and how much they’ve spent, with the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Homeland Security, General Services Administration, and U.S. Department of Agriculture having the most transactions.
The Department of Veterans Affairs spent the most at more than $17.3 billion, while the Defense Department spent more than $11.2 billion, according to a spreadsheet posted by DOGE for Fiscal Year 2024.
“DOGE is working [with] the agencies to simplify the program and reduce admin costs,” the group said in a statement on X.
The specific numbers outlined by the General Services Administration (GSA) for fiscal year 2024 include $39.7 billion in “total program” spending and $506 million in refunds earned by agencies and organizations. GSA also notes that $441 was spent on average for each transaction.
DOGE’s statement on March 10 comes as lawsuits and judgments targeting it continue to pile up. On the same day, a federal judge wrote that the auditing commission must release public records related to its operations.
Since it was created via an executive order in January by President Donald Trump, DOGE has gone from agency to agency and has identified spending as well as programs to be slashed.
In Monday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington sided with a left-leaning government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, in finding that DOGE likely must comply with the Freedom of Information Act.
Opposing the motion, government lawyers said DOGE is not subject to FOIA because it is part of the Executive Office of the President, but that they would outline their arguments later in the case.
Court precedent dictates that entities within the Executive Office of the President are only subject to FOIA if they have “wielded substantial authority independently of the President.”
Cooper ruled that DOGE has, saying that Trump signed an order creating DOGE and enabling it to implement his cost-cutting agenda.
Cooper wrote that DOGE “appears to have the power not just to evaluate federal programs, but to drastically reshape and even eliminate them wholesale.”
Over the weekend, DOGE said in a statement on X that it discovered some $312 million in loans that were allegedly given out to children aged 11 and younger during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“While it is possible to have business arrangements where this is legal, that is highly unlikely for these 5,593 loans, as they all also used [a Social Security number] with the incorrect name,” the post reads.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/more-200000-government-credit-cards-deactivated-doge
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