SRINAGAR: The Indian Army is gearing up to turn their soldiers into real-life ‘Iron Man’ with the help of jet pack suits that will provide them with enhanced surveillance capabilities at the country’s borders with China and Pakistan, as well as in the conflict ridden region of Jammu and Kashmir, The EurAsian Times reported.
These suits are propelled by engines running on gas or liquid fuel and can carry a person weighing at least 80 kilograms while flying at a speed of at least 50 kilometers per hour for a minimum of eight minutes. The Indian Army recently got a demonstration of the technology from the UK-based company, Gravity Industries, owned by ex-marine and innovator Richard Browning.
Quoting an Indian Army official, The EurAsian Times reported that the jet pack suits are coming as an aerial surveillance platform, and their effectiveness will vary depending on the terrain, wind factor, and vegetation. However, the army is also exploring the possibility of equipping soldiers with infrared goggles to scan through thick vegetation to identify enemy combatants.
The Indian Army’s requirements for the purchase specify that the equipment should be suitable for desert, marine, and mountain warfare. Military strategists are also considering the use of jet pack suits as another significant disruptor in the tactical battle space, similar to drone technology on the battlefield.
The technology can be used as a force multiplier to counter terrorists in urban and semi-urban settings. According to Gravity Industries, the military version of the jet suit is powered by five gas turbine engines that generate more than 1,000 horsepower and produce 144 kilograms of thrust, allowing vertical lift of up to 12,000 feet.
The Indian Navy’s marine commando (MARCOS) also sees potential in the jet pack suits as a mode of insertion, allowing soldiers to gain vantage points for reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, or placing a sniper. Additionally, the suits can be used for quick exhilaration.
The UK’s Royal Navy and the US Marine Corps already use these jet pack suits in various limited roles. The Indian Army’s interest in this innovative technology comes in the backdrop of skirmishes with the People’s Liberation Army along the Line of Actual Control between India and China.
Tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions are normal in international diplomacy, but relations have been rocky between the two countries for years and China has targeted Canadian trade in the past. Canola exports, for instance, were banned for years in the wake of Canadian authorities detaining Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018.
This latest move comes after Canada declared diplomat Zhao Wei persona non grata on Monday over his alleged involvement in an attempt to pressure Conservative MP Michael Chong through his extended family living in Hong Kong.
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said in a statement Monday Canada has “zero tolerance” for “any form of foreign interference,” and that Canada has warned diplomats in the country that they could be sent packing over such actions.
It followed a story in The Globe and Mail newspaper that described a Canadian intelligence report warning China is targeting Canada to interfere in domestic politics. An anonymous source quoted in the article accused Zhao of working on the influence campaign against Chong, who had sponsored a motion in 2021 decrying China’s abuses of the Uyghur Muslim minority population as a genocide. Following those revelations, the head of Canadian intelligence then informed Chong in person last week that he and his family were being targeted.
Chong and others have accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of taking too long to expel Zhao. But Trudeau maintained he had to weigh the possible repercussions.
Chong’s case is just the latest to rock political circles. Foreign interference has been a wider controversy simmering in Canada for a long time — until March, when it exploded into one scandalous revelation after another, putting the Liberals on the defensive ever since.
Leaked reports from Canadian intelligence have singled out Chinese meddling in Canadian affairs as the greatest threat to national security, and warned that Beijing has tried to influence outcomes of local races in elections in 2019 and 2021. What’s more, China allegedly tried to bolster support for Liberal candidates and defeat Conservatives.
Canadian lawmaker Han Dong resigned from the governing Liberal Party that month and now sits as an independent, following allegations in a Global News report alleging he advised a Chinese diplomat to hold off on releasing two high-profile Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were held captive by China at the time. He is suing the news outlet for defamation for publishing the allegations, which he denies.
The House of Commons has also called on the government to call a public inquiry into foreign interference in Canada’s elections, heaping more pressure onto the beleaguered Liberals over the matter.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
SRINAGAR: Kashmiri women journalist Safina Nabi on April 22, 2023 won the prestigious Fetisov Journalism Award for her article published on Scroll about how countless women in Kashmir, whose husbands disappeared and could never be traced, have been cut out of inheritances and left to fend for themselves.
Safina Nabi Wins Fetisov Award at Dubai on April 22, 2023
Nabi won the second prize in the “Outstanding Contribution to Peace” category, and the Fetisov Journalism Awards praised her reporting for providing a “comprehensive and impressively detailed picture” of the issue.
According to a press release from the awards, Nabi’s story “highlights what is not known, shows the human consequences of neglect, and most emphatically gives voice to the people totally disregarded by their own authorities and whose ordeal is largely invisible to international audiences.”
The Fetisov Journalism Awards have four categories in total, and each winner in the three categories shares a cash prize of 130,000 Swiss francs (Rs 11, 94,371).
Nabi’s award-winning reporting brings attention to an often-overlooked issue and highlights the struggles faced by “half-widows” in Kashmir, whose stories are often ignored.
SRINAGAR: Kashmiris are once again facing exorbitant airfare prices ahead of the busy travel season, with some paying two to three times the usual fees to fly from Srinagar to Delhi. Typically, this flight would cost between Rs 3000 and Rs 5000, but the current prices range from Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000.
Even Haj pilgrims are not immune to these high prices, with those departing from the Srinagar Embarkation Point (EP) having to pay Rs 50,000 more than those leaving from the Delhi EP. The price hike has prompted criticism from some quarters, who accuse the airlines of profiting unfairly at the expense of the public.
Senior CPI (M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami took to Twitter to denounce the increase in airfare prices. “Airlines are arbitrarily raising fares, leaving travellers in distress,” he tweeted. “Even Haj pilgrims are being forced to pay more. The tentative Haj amount payable by pilgrims at the Srinagar Embarkation Point (EP) is Rs 50,000 higher than that for pilgrims embarking from Delhi EP.”
During the 2023 Hajj conference, Smriti Zubin Irani, the Minister for Minority Affairs, announced that Indian citizens travelling to Saudi Arabia for Hajj would pay at least Rs 1 lakh less than the previous cost.
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While its far from certain how, exactly, the Treasury Department would handle a default — including whether it would prioritize certain payments or delay paying the government’s bills — the think tank noted that about $50 billion in Social Security benefits are set to go out in the first half of June, in addition to more than $20 billion in payments to Medicaid providers, $6 billion in federal salaries, $12 billion in veterans benefits and $1 billion in SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps.
And those hugely significant payments are just a few that could be affected, the Bipartisan Policy Center cautioned, and don’t represent an “exhaustive” list “of all cash flows on a particular day.”
The Biden administration has already dismissed the untested idea of paying some bills but not others, arguing that it would be unfair to average Americans, cause widespread economic disruption and prove logistically impossible. A more likely scenario, in the event of a default, is that Treasury would choose to delay all bills, waiting until there’s enough revenue to cover all payments for any given day, the Bipartisan Policy Center said.
The think tank’s new projection piles further urgency onto Tuesday’s debt limit meeting at the White House, despite slim prospects for a major breakthrough between Democrats insisting on a straightforward hike and Republicans pushing for major concessions in return for their debt votes. What remains unclear, though, is whether the Treasury Department can limp along paying the bills until June 15, when quarterly tax receipts would provide a cash infusion and likely stave off default through the end of next month.
If Treasury can hold off a default until the end of June, it would be able to tap into about $145 billion in new “extraordinary measures,” buying the government a little more borrowing power into the summer. The coming weeks will offer more clarity about whether Treasury can make it to mid-June and give Congress and the White House a longer ramp to negotiate a debt limit deal, said Shai Akabas, BPC’s director of economic policy.
“I still don’t think now is the time for panic, but it’s certainly time to start getting concerned,” Akabas said, noting that Treasury “is skating on very thin ice” next month due to low cash flows.
The Treasury cash crunch that could cripple the U.S. economy in the coming weeks stems in part from a disappointing tax season, mixed with delayed tax filing deadlines for residents of states like California that sit in designated disaster areas, Akabas said.
Other estimates that point to a potential debt catastrophe in early June also underscore that considerable variability in the X-date will remain — until perhaps just days before the U.S. would officially default — thanks to the often unpredictable nature of federal cash flows.
After Yellen issued her warning last week, the independent Congressional Budget Office also said it sees “a significantly greater risk that the Treasury will run out of funds in early June.”
Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, told senators during a Budget Committee hearing on Thursday that the X-date could fall on June 8. He added that Yellen’s early warning of June 1 is also very possible, as is a “best case scenario” of Aug. 8.
The distress signals from government and outside forecasters have done nothing to jumpstart talks between the White House, which is insisting on a “clean” debt limit increase, and Republicans, who are demanding spending cuts in exchange for lifting the borrowing cap. The Biden administration has refused to negotiate, vowing to keep government funding on a separate track.
A number of Republicans aren’t feeling the pressure either, viewing Yellen’s early June projection as nothing more than a political ploy aimed at squeezing the GOP to swallow a clean debt hike. Akabas said Yellen’s warning is consistent with how the Bipartisan Policy Center is analyzing the situation, however, noting that “no risk is too small a risk to flag.”
“Yeah, I don’t think she’s playing games,” Zandi concurred in an interview last week.
Experts say that financial markets are starting to signal trouble ahead amid the debt standoff, particularly among yields in short-term Treasury securities, and that those cracks will only start to worsen as the country lurches closer to the limit. The U.S. is also at risk of another credit rating downgrade, a painful consequence of the debt ceiling standoff that gripped Washington more than a decade ago.
Pressure from the markets is what may ultimately force action, Zandi said.
“I don’t think lawmakers will act until they’re pushed to act by the stock market and the bond market saying, ‘If you guys don’t, this is what’s going to happen’,” Zandi said. “There’s going to be a lot of red on the screen, a lot of 401Ks are going to be diminished and there’s going to be a lot of angry people.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
SRINAGAR: Parents in Kashmir have raised concerns about abrupt increases in annual fees for the current academic session at Tyndale Biscoe and Mallinson higher secondary school. They claim that the school has increased fees by over Rs 2000 without the approval of the school fee fixation committee, and without consulting with parents.
“In this era when business in the Kashmir valley has shuddered, Tyndale Biscoe and Mallinson higher secondary school enhanced the annual fee,” parents claimed.
A group of parents has called the increase arbitrary and fears that the school will continue to raise fees annually if they don’t protest. The school has also charged additional Rs 3000 for summer camp, which was previously included in the annual fee.
Attempts to contact school authorities for comment have been unsuccessful.
Reports suggest that other private schools, even those with lower student enrolment and fewer facilities, have also increased their fees.
Director of Education in Kashmir, Mr. Tasaduq Hussain, has stated that schools must charge fees based on the facilities they offer, and parents should be able to pay in instalments. He has also warned that action will be taken against schools that charge extra fees. [KNT]
But with talks set to pick up steam, the New York Democrat could soon be playing a more pivotal role. Should a compromise bill be reached between the White House and congressional GOP leadership, it would almost assuredly require some — if not many — House Democratic votes to get through that chamber.
Two years ago, the solution for Biden would have been easy: Let then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi — the premier vote wrangler of her generation — do the work. Now it’s on Jeffries, someone the White House is still getting to know. The two only had their first known substantive meeting this past January, when Biden huddled with the top Democratic leaders at the start of the new Congress.
In short, the first pivotal test of his and Biden’s ability to work together could take place with the global economy on the line. And how that goes will provide an early glimpse of what Democrats hope will be the dominant partnership in Washington in 2024 if Biden wins a second term and Democrats win back the House. Not everyone in the party is sure of what to expect.
“All of this is going to need a level of coordination we haven’t yet seen,” said a senior Democratic House aide. “This will be the first time things are tested.”
Jeffries, the first Black lawmaker to ever lead a party in Congress, is nearly 30 years Biden’s junior — he was all of 2 years old when Biden arrived in Washington for his first Senate term.
Their lack of shared history is evident in how little the two have talked about each other in public. For a man who loves to riff on the political leaders he knows well, the only anecdote Biden has shared publicly about Jeffries is that, as vice president, he campaigned for him in 2012. Jeffries returned the favor during Biden’s presidential race in 2020.
Two days before the election as they campaigned together outside Philadelphia, the two men engaged in small talk that quickly turned serious, as reported in “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.” Biden warned that if they don’t win, “I’m not sure we’re going to have a country.”
Neither party would say how frequently Jeffries and Biden communicate directly. But they have held at least two calls — one of which has not been previously reported — in late April that included Schumer as the debt limit debate ramped up, according to a person familiar with the conversations.
In interviews with a dozen lawmakers, senior aides and administration officials, a picture is painted of a relationship that’s been largely positive (with some brief missteps) but still very much developing. Those close to Jeffries and Biden say that communication is frequent between both camps from principals to senior staff. They point to their similar messaging and strategy on debt limit — so far. Jeffries is also in regular contact with White House chief of staff Jeff Zients through meetings and calls. The two had a long working lunch two weeks ago to discuss the debt limit, according to a senior administration official granted anonymity to speak freely.
The president “has a strong relationship with Leader Jeffries and a great deal of respect for the masterful job he’s doing as head of the House Democrats and holding Republicans accountable for their extreme MAGA agenda, like forcing the most draconian cuts to veterans in American history in order to cut taxes for the rich,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates.
In a statement to POLITICO, Jeffries praised Biden.
“He’s a good man, visionary leader and transformational president who has been there for me since I arrived in Congress,” he said. “House Democrats look forward to our continued work together to make life better for everyday Americans.”
Overshadowing the Biden-Jeffries relationship is the absence of Pelosi. For years — decades even — Biden world and its Democratic predecessor were able to rely on Pelosi’s political acumen to help shepherd tough bills and must pass legislation through that chamber. The trust built over time was so profound that it altered White House whip operations. In Nancy we trust, the saying went.
Jeffries, in some ways, is just now building a working relationship with the Biden White House, though Louisa Terrell, director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, said Biden’s relationship with Pelosi helped lay the foundation for what’s being built now.
“We felt like we had built a scaffolding around how we work together and the ease in which the president could pick up the phone, the ease in which we all did our work together, and we went right into the 118th with that,” Terrell said in an interview. “We have a proof point” that it can be productive, she said, pointing to the legislative accomplishments of the last Congress, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, bipartisan infrastructure law and semiconductor policy.
Still, there is evidence of growing pains. Back-to-back episodes of mixed messages on Biden’s position on high profile legislation earlier this year rankled House Democrats who felt the White House blindsided them — one on a GOP-backed bid to repeal changes to the D.C. criminal code and the other on efforts related to Covid restrictions.
Privately, rank-and-file House members and senior aides blamed the White House for misreading the potency of the issues. They call the incidents frustrating but have largely moved on. Since then, the White House has provided clear and early Statements of Administration Policy on hot-button Republican bills, including legislation to prohibit transgender girls from participating in women’s sports.
Jeffries refused to criticize the White House in either instance. When pressed by CNN shortly after the two bills moved, he described Democrats as “incredibly unified.”
Terrell also pointed to unified messaging on more recent policies, such as the Texas ruling on abortion medication, as proof of that positive relationship.
“What I really care about is: Are we all talking to each other? Are they getting the information they need? Are we hearing from them and what they’re hearing from their constituents? How do we fight in these really hard fights and frankly, how do we take back the House?” she said.
To that end, the White House legislative staff participates in at least seven regular “check-ins” with House leadership staff and seven weekly meetings with various groups, including House staff directors and caucuses.
Biden has told leadership and rank-and-file members to use an older means of technology to communicate with the White House.
“We’ve heard the president say: you literally have the bat phone, please call anytime,” Terrell said. “My door’s always open to you. My phone is always open to you. I know how meaningful it is to [have a] back and forth.”
Jeffries’ first true test as minority leader will be ensuring House Democrats stay aligned in backing Biden’s position against bargaining on raising the debt limit. The more significant obstacle will come much closer to the so-called X-date — when the government runs out of money and can’t pay its bills.
Before Tuesday’s meeting was arranged, a handful of moderate Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, broke ranks publicly and said Biden needs to get to the negotiating table. Ahead of the meeting, Democrats are largely aligned in arguing that Republicans should lift the debt ceiling without conditions and then hold a separate negotiation on the budget.
Only three weeks out from default, Jeffries refused to commit House Democrats to supporting any deal struck between Biden and McCarthy but he insisted they’re in line with the president.
“We’re in lockstep right now in terms of the path forward that President Biden laid out,” he said Sunday on “Meet the Press.” “Ultimately, everyone evaluates on the merits, on any particular piece of legislation, that is presented to us.”
If a deal is hatched, Biden will almost certainly need at least some votes from House Democrats, as House Republicans are likely to balk at a compromise that moves substantially off of the bill that they passed.
At that juncture, Jeffries brings some attributes to the table. He has a working relationship with McCarthy, including texting and coordinating on some joint statements, such as a recent statement calling on Russia to release political prisoners Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan.
He also has strong support among his rank-and-file.
“Hakeem’s got a good relationship with everyone in the caucus,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.). Comparing the Senate minority party with the House minority, “McConnell’s sort of backed away, and Hakeem’s been engaged. … I think Hakeem’s the right guy.”
While allies acknowledge that Jeffries — and his relationship with Biden — has yet to be tested and he will likely face difficult comparisons to Pelosi as he moves forward, there is a willingness within the caucus to give him space and trust.
“Jeffries has done a great job so far,” said Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a fellow New York Democrat. “We’re going to have to find common ground and collaboration; he is clear eyed about that. He’s not going to bet and risk destroying our economy or cutting things to the most vulnerable people among us.”
Bowman said he’s confident Jeffries and Biden are on the same page. And he pushed back on the idea that the new leadership role or the high-stakes fiscal standoff have put any new amount of pressure on him.
“He’s been a Black man in America his entire life. He’s had to operate in white patriarchal spaces,” he said. “It’s not always easy for people of color and women to operate in those spaces and thrive — he has done so. I’m sure his approach is: I gotta always bring my A game.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
What’s lacking here is any assurance that those being surveyed are familiar enough to accurately rate the outlets they’ve been asked to judge. Almost nobody — not even press critics — keeps a close enough tab on 56 outlets, at least a dozen of which are paywalled or require a cable subscription, to render a fair appraisal of all of them. We all consume media in our own bubbles. And even though the survey, to its credit, has removed from its calculations responses who say an outlet is neither trustworthy nor untrustworthy, or answer that they don’t know, we have no way of knowing how many of the 1,500 respondents took wild, uninformed stabs at rating the outlets.
In times like these, there’s value in measuring trust, but this poll, which is destined to become the talk of cable news and op-ed pages, does a poor job of putting a yardstick to how outlets are perceived. Allowing respondents to judge the trustworthiness of outlets without determining how often they consume them is like asking a kid to rate the flavors from the Baskin-Robbins library he’s never tasted.
For instance, PBS and the BBC rank at the top of the trust chart, just under the Weather Channel. But the survey gives us no way of knowing whether the poll respondents ever watch PBS news or sip from the BBC faucet. Maybe they’ve expressed “trust” in the BBC because its prestige hangs like vapor in the cultural air we all breathe, and they reflexively say they trust the BBC even though they rarely read BBC News or tune their TVs to it.
Scrolling down the chart, another flaw emerges: Legacy outlets like Forbes, Time, the New York Times, the three broadcast networks and Reuters collected higher ratings than relative newcomers like the Hill, Axios, Slate, Yahoo News and the Washington Examiner. It’s fair to ask, as with the BBC example, what question respondents are answering.
Are low-sophistication news consumers merely expressing name recognition, not an assessment of trustworthiness? A perfect example of this would be Newsweek’s rating, which is higher than that of Bloomberg News. Newsweek was a storied news brand when owned by the Graham family, but its reputation has rightly suffered under its new owners. (See Daniel Tovrov’s piece in the Columbia Journalism Review and Alex Shepard’s in the New Republic.) No impartial, informed judge of news would ever rank today’s Newsweek over the data-rich pages of Bloomberg News. But there it is.
How much trust is locked up in how the outlets’ names sound? The Economist calls to mind a place where business experts working in an ivory tower measure supply-demand curves with a micrometer. POLITICO, which rates lower than the Economist, might have gotten docked a couple of points because it sounds to the naïve ear like a trade association magazine for invidious politicians (which it isn’t, trust me!). A different impression would surely result if a new reader were exposed to several months’ worth of each.
The survey does produce some results that seem self-evident. Democrats trust MSNBC more than Republicans, and Republicans trust Fox News more than Democrats. But does it make sense that Democrats trust Infowars more than Republicans do CNN? What exactly is being measured here? Please send an explanation to the email address below.
Another unsurprising result is that, in general, Democrats appear to trust news media more than do Republicans. This might reflect the fact that so many of the 56 outlets under examination are liberal or relatively centrist in their orientation.
But then there are weird outliers, such as Democrats giving the conservative Daily Caller a higher trust score than their Republican kin do. Likewise, what does it mean that Democrats give trust scores to conservative outlets like the Federalist, Infowars, the National Review and the New York Post that are within shouting distance of Republican scores? Maybe it’s a function of Fox News’ decades-long coaching of its audience not to “trust the media,” and therefore that outside of the established TV brands of Fox News, Newsmax and OAN, Republicans refuse to automatically bestow trust on any media, even outlets that appeal to their prejudices.
As this column has expressed before, the general decline of trust in media is somewhat paradoxical. News reporting has never been more precise, easier to check and criticize, or more timely. What has changed since the early 1960s, when trust peaked in the polls, is that the press covers many topics today that went left unassigned back then: stories about race, gender, sex, equity, foreign intervention and religion, just to give a few examples.
To be sure, recent decades are chockablock with media misfires that actively damaged trust, as scholar Michael Socolow recently wrote. “Measured skepticism can be healthy and media criticism comprises an essential component of media literacy — and a vibrant democracy,” is how he puts it. So some of this distrust is well-deserved. But in other cases, expressions of “distrust” in media polls are just another way for people to say the contemporary subject matter in the news makes them uncomfortable.
That the Weather Channel rarely broadcasts anything more controversial than flood, blizzard, hurricane, fire and tornado coverage and forecasts goes a long way in explaining its high trust quotient. But as the channel’s bosses deliver on their promise to produce more climate change coverage, expect the usual dark clouds of distrust to gather there, too.
******
Send your news weather reports to [email protected]. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed is a low-pressure zone. My Mastodon and Post accounts have gone all foggy. My Substack Notes account needs a rainmaker. My RSS feed is a fast-moving storm front.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The end of the emergency would also end Title 42, a law that permits the U.S. to deny asylum and migration claims for public health reasons.
The Biden administration is sending 1,500 troops to the border in preparation of the end of the policy — but Republicans in Congress argue that the policy isn’t actually tied to the public health emergency.
Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) are also working on legislation that would grant a temporary two-year authority to expel migrants from the United States similar to what is currently allowed under Title 42. A key distinction is that the extension being proposed by Tillis and Sinema, which was first reported by POLITICO, does not rely on a public health order, making it functionally different from the Trump-era program that President Joe Biden kept in place.
Covid food assistance
Work requirements for federal food assistance programs that were paused during the pandemic will return in more than two dozen mostly Republican-controlled states. Certain administrative rules that helped people receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits will also end.
CDC’s Covid trackers
The CDC will lose access to some of the surveillance data it used to assess Covid risk, requiring it to shelve its Covid-19 Community Levels metric, which classified Covid danger as low, medium or high, and recommended preventive actions accordingly.
CDC officials said they’ll offer risk assessments based on hospital admissions instead.
Some of the changes may improve the data’s reliability, such as the coming shift in how the agency counts Covid deaths, which will change from aggregate case surveillance to provisional death certificates.
The agency will no longer have comprehensive data on vaccination, however, because some jurisdictions have not reached data use agreements with the CDC.
Rules around nursing supervision
Certified registered nurse anesthetists will once again be required to be supervised by a physician, though states can apply to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to extend the waiver.
Medicare Covid rapid test reimbursement
Older adults on Medicare will no longer be able to obtain eight rapid over-the-counter Covid-19 tests at no cost once the public health emergency ends. Medicare generally does not cover or pay for over-the-counter products, however, laboratory-based testing ordered by doctors will still be covered with no out-of-pocket costs.
Private insurers will also no longer be required to reimburse eight OTC rapid tests per month or laboratory testing, but the Department of Health and Human Services is urging them to continue coverage.
People with coverage through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program will continue to have coverage for no-cost OTC rapid tests through Sept. 30, 2024.
Hospital reporting requirements during Covid
CMS had waived several reporting requirements for hospitals in a bid to lessen the administrative burden while also combating Covid-19 surges.
The agency waived a requirement that a hospital report by the next day a patient death in the intensive care unit caused by their disease.
Another requirement that will return is for the authentication of any verbal orders within 48 hours. CMS waived this requirement to offer more effective treatment in a surge situation, according to a fact sheet on the waivers.
Prescriptions for medication such as Adderall and buprenorphine
The Drug Enforcement Administration has proposed curtailing pandemic rules that had allowed patients to be prescribed controlled substances like Adderall for ADHD and buprenorphine for opioid use disorder without having to go to a doctor first.
Under proposed rules, which are not finalized, patients who need buprenorphine for opioid addiction, testosterone for gender-affirming care, or ketamine for depression, could get an initial 30-day supply via telemedicine, but would need to visit a doctor’s office to continue taking those medications. Patients seeking Adderall to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or Oxycontin for pain relief, will need to go to a doctor’s office before they can start taking the drug.
Acknowledging criticism of the rules, which have come under fire from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and in public comment, the DEA moved to extend pandemic-era rules while it finalizes new ones.
Requirements for long-term care
Patients will again have to spend three consecutive days in a hospital before being eligible to go to a skilled nursing facility under CMS rules that were waived through the pandemic.
A similar rule, which required patients to be in the intensive care unit for three days before being eligible to move to a long-term, acute-care hospital will also no longer be waived. Several emergency room doctors told POLITICO they worry the return of the rules will mean longer waits for patients and worsen overcrowding that has plagued hospitals through the pandemic.
Free-standing emergency departments
The PHE granted a waiver to facilities, which offer emergency services outside of a hospital setting, to get reimbursement from Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare.
Industry groups and some lawmakers are worried about the loss of this reimbursement option. Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) introduced bipartisan legislation in March to make the waiver permanent. He warned in a statement that month that removal of the waiver could cause some rural residents to travel farther for care.
What stays the same
Covid-19 vaccines and treatments
The U.S. government will transition Covid-19 vaccines and treatments to the commercial market in the coming months, however the end of the public health emergency is not directly tied to the shift, according to HHS.
The government still has supplies of Covid-19 vaccines and antiviral treatment Paxlovid. Until they run out, doctors administering federally acquired shots are required to give them at no out-of-pocket cost to people regardless of their insurance status.
Once federal supplies of treatments are exhausted, those not on Medicaid will likely face out-of-pocket expenses, similar to cost-sharing for other drugs. People with Medicaid will continue to have access to Covid-19 treatments without cost-sharing until Sept. 30, 2024.
Under the Affordable Care Act, private health plans must cover routine preventative services, such as vaccines recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, meaning that Covid-19 vaccines will be available without cost-sharing. Older adults will continue to have access to no-cost Covid-19 vaccines under Medicare Part B.
Emergency use authorizations
The end of the public health emergency does not impact the FDA’s ability to maintain or grant new emergency use authorizations to medical products. The agency is working with manufacturers to transition products to traditional approval, but has indicated it will maintain EUAs as long as necessary.
The agency’s ability to issue EUAs is tied to a separate law — the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.
Access to care in the home
Congress extended pandemic-era rules once tied to the emergency through 2024, allowing expanded telehealth access in the Medicare program. It did the same for hospital at-home waivers and provisions, allowing high-deductible health plans to offer telehealth before patients hit their deductible.
Robert King contributed to this report.
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