Government Executive
email Restore Program Performance Data to the President’s Budget
The Trump Administration’s guidance to remove the data from the president’s budget is counterproductive federal agencies should be increasing their use of performance information to improve results.
In a surprise pre-Christmas move the Trump administration issued new guidance directing federal agencies to omit performance information from the President’s Budget. To justify the change, the White House Office of Management and Budget noted the administration s desire to “eliminate bureaucratic processes that do not lead to impactful change.” Given that the incoming Biden administration will issue its own budget proposal to Congress, this 11th hour change is damaging and puzzling, in particular because this link between performance and the budget is required by law.
Setting Up A New Shop Oregon s former governor is pushing a rational way to control drug
costs. Sarah Harney | December 2003
To tame the prescription drug costs in their Medicaid programs, states are trying everything from limiting prescription coverage to eyeing Canadian-based purchasing. John Kitzhaber, a former governor of Oregon and physician, and Mark Gibson, his health policy adviser for eight years, are plotting another approach: Provide states with clinical information about the relative effectiveness of drugs so they can compare prices.
It s an approach that Oregon, Washington and Idaho started partnering to use a few years ago. They researched information about the effectiveness of several classes of medications, such as cholesterol- lowering drugs, ulcer drugs and long-term painkillers, and then encouraged doctors to prescribe the least-costly effective medications. When the three states wanted to expand the research t