A recent federal court decision in McKee Foods Corp. v. BFP Inc. declared that Tennessee’s “any willing pharmacy” requirement was preempted by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. This decision impacts self-funded group health plans, potentially allowing them to comply with a single set of rules nationwide rather than navigating conflicting state laws.
Trending in Telehealth: March 2025
In recent telehealth news, the governor of Mississippi has signed SB 2415 into law, which mandates that health insurance plans cover telemedicine services to the same extent as in-person consultations. The bill also requires that all health insurance and employee benefit plans in Mississippi reimburse out-of-network providers for telemedicine services under the same reimbursement policies applicable to other out-of-network providers.
Read more about other telemedicine-related legislative and regulatory developments in our monthly Trending in Telehealth report.
Senate Committee Advances Bills to Tackle High Drug Prices, Enhance Market Competition
The US Senate Judiciary Committee has advanced six bills aimed at reducing pharmaceutical prices and improving market competitiveness. These bills address various issues, including limiting the number of patents a biologics license holder can assert in litigation, clarifying the boundaries of permissible settlements in “pay for delay” agreements, and preventing “product hopping” by branded drug manufacturers. Additionally, the bills seek to curb abuses of the US Food and Drug Administration’s citizen petition process, improve interagency coordination on patent information, and mandate the Federal Trade Commission publish a report analyzing pharmaceutical benefit manager pricing practices and the pharmaceutical supply chain.
Governing Health Podcast | 2025 Executive Compensation Committee: Key Priorities and Strategic Insights
This special quarterly series of the Governing Health podcast with SullivanCotter highlights developments in and offers support to the board’s executive compensation committee as it navigates a range of complex operational, technical, and strategic challenges.
In this episode, Michael Peregrine, Tim Cotter, Bruce Greenblatt, Kathy Hastings, and Jeff Holdvogt offer recommendations for the committee to focus on in 2025, including:
- Establishing appropriate incentive goals in an evolving health system
- Prioritizing executive succession planning/leadership development
- Keeping appraised of regulatory and market trends
- Ensuring flexibility and defensibility in committee approval processes
- Aligning key governance documents to fulfill committee fiduciary duties
- Evaluating committee reporting and coordination with other board committees
- Overseeing executive compensation in for-profit and not-for-profit ventures subsidiaries
- Considering board compensation trends in not-for-profit health systems
- Determining the need to evolve committee composition
- Addressing executive compensation scrutiny
The Employee Retention Credit: How to Litigate and Resolve Claims
The Employee Retention Credit (ERC), introduced under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act in March 2020, was designed to help employers retain employees during the COVID-19 pandemic by offering a refundable tax credit against certain employment taxes. However, the processing and payment of ERC claims have faced significant delays, with many claims remaining unprocessed or disallowed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
In this Bloomberg Tax article, Shawn O’Brien, Samuel Hamer, and Michael Scarduzio summarize each ERC stage and outline a taxpayer’s path to payment by stage.
