House passes bill to reopen government

The House on Tuesday passed a spending package, sending the bill to President Donald Trump's desk, where he signed it into law and ended the partial government shutdown.

The House voted 217-214 to fund a large portion of the federal government through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30. The bill provides $1.2 trillion spread across five bills for several agencies, including to the Pentagon and HHS.

The vote comes after President Trump and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) reached a deal on the funding package, which passed through the Senate last week. Senate Democrats presented a set of demands that would need to accompany any additional funding for DHS, including requiring immigration agents to wear body cameras and carry identification, as well as increasing the legal threshold for arrests and searches.

The legislation splits off funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), funding it through Feb. 13 at current levels in order to allow lawmakers time to negotiate over new restrictions on immigration agents.

In addition to funding parts of the government, the legislation features new rules on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), including extensive reporting and transparency requirements as well as requiring PBMs to pass the rebates they earn from drugmakers through to health plans and patients.

The bill also includes a two-year extension of telehealth rules first permitted during the COVID-19 pandemic that expand the services physicians can bill to Medicare, as well as a five-year extension for acute hospital-at-home coverage under Medicare.

(Edmondson, New York Times, 2/3; Beavers/Hughes, Wall Street Journal, 2/3; McAuliff, Modern Healthcare, 2/3; Stein, The Guardian, 2/3)

HHS will invest $100M in faith-based addiction programs

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday announced that the federal government will be expanding funding for faith-based addiction treatment in response to increasing public drug use and homelessness in American cities.

The initiative, called Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-based Treatment and Supports (STREETS), will be given $100 million to fund targeted outreach, psychiatric care, medical stabilization, and crisis intervention for individuals experiencing homelessness and substance use disorder.

Kennedy said that a fragmented healthcare system has encouraged people with mental illness and addiction to "cycle endlessly between sidewalks, emergency room visits, jails, and mental hospitals and shelters."

He added that "substance abuse drives homelessness" and called for intensive treatment programs that would teach homeless people "the lessons of how to live in a community" and help them find employment.

As part of the STREETS initiative, Kennedy said the federal government will open funding opportunities, including state opioid response grants, to faith-based organizations.

"We are bringing faith-based providers fully into this work," he said. "This is a chronic disease. It's a physical disease, it's a mental disease, it's emotional disease, but above all, it's spiritual disease. And we need to recognize that and faith-based organizations play a critical role."

(Barry, New York Times, 2/2; Gliadkovskaya, Fierce Healthcare, 2/2)

In a statement, Greg Lopes, a spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which lobbies on behalf of PBMs, said the group's members have already "significantly reformed their models to maximize transparency in recent years."

"We appreciate the desire to bring greater transparency across the drug supply chain," Lopes added.

(Herman, STAT+ [subscription required], 1/30; Parduhn, Healthcare Dive, 1/30)

ACA enrollment drops by 1M

Enrollment in Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans dropped by more than a million after enhanced subsidies expired at the end of last year, which caused monthly premiums to spike.

CMS last week reported that 23 million people signed up for an ACA plan during open enrollment, which ended on Jan. 15, marking a drop from the 24.2 million who enrolled for insurance during the same period in 2025.

Last year marked four consecutive years of record enrollment for ACA plans, in part due to enhanced premium tax credits signed into law by President Joe Biden and extended under the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act.

However, those enhanced subsidies expired at the end of 2025, and while the House passed a bill that would extend the enhanced subsidies for another three years, that bill has stalled in the Senate.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) cautioned the dangers of people not signing up for ACA plans because of expensive premiums and noted that thousands of people in Washington are now uninsured because they "cannot make ends meet."

"Having folks get off the system will derail the entire healthcare marketplace, especially as more people will unenroll after they receive their first bill," Smith said.

Kevin Patterson, CEO of Connect for Health Colorado, said he's seeing similar drop-offs.

"On one hand, it's encouraging to see enrollment remain relatively steady, with only a slight dip, and to see so many people receive meaningful financial assistance," he said. "On the other hand, it's deeply troubling that a record number of people are canceling their plans because they simply can't afford their monthly payments, or are being forced to choose between healthcare and basic necessities like housing and food."

(Fields, The Hill, 1/29)

Rollout of TrumpRx delayed

The Trump administration has delayed the rollout of TrumpRx.gov, a direct-to-consumer website for prescription drugs that allows patients to pay cash for certain medications directly through the site.

The site was slated to go live by the end of January. However, during a Cabinet meeting last week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the launch "is going to be happening sometime, probably in the next 10 days." Reasoning behind the delay was not specified.

The news comes as the administration has rolled out new guidance clarifying how drugmakers can sell lower-cost prescription drugs directly to consumers without violating the anti-kickback statute.

In a bulletin issued last week, HHS' Office of Inspector General outlined safeguards that "lower the risk" of these arrangements while also noting that the statute remains a criminal law that will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

(Jeffries, Becker's Hospital Review, 2/2)