(May 23, 2025) – FDA Approves Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine
The Food and Drug Administration recently approved Novavax's COVID-19 vaccine for adults ages 65 and older and individuals 12 through 64 years old with at least one of the underlying health condition putting them at high risk for severe illness.
The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine uses a more traditional protein-based technology, which differentiates it from the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Comirnaty (Pfizer-BioNTech) and SPIKEVAX (Moderna) remain available under emergency use authorization for children as young as six months.
CMS Issues Proposed Rule to Close Health Care-Related Tax Loophole
On May 15, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released a proposed rule to address a loophole in a regulatory statistical test applied to state proposals for Medicaid tax waivers. The test is designed to ensure, as required by statute, that non-uniform or non-broad-based health care-related taxes, authorized under a waiver, are generally redistributive.
The proposed provisions would better implement the statutory requirements by adding additional safeguards to ensure that tax waivers that exploit the loophole — because they pass the current statistical test but are not generally redistributive — are not approvable.
The rule has a 60-day comment period.
CMS Issues CY 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Correction Notice
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a calendar year 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule correction notice. The corrections are mainly typographical errors.
MLN Connects Provider eNews Available
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued the following updates to MLN Connects Provider eNews: