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Doctors, hospitals and community health centers will have to wait a little longer to learn their fates in full-year funding bills Congress is trying to hash out. That's because the short-term funding agreement Congress passed Thursday, which keeps parts of the government open until March 8 and the rest until March 22, is silent on key issues such as Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments, Medicare physician reimbursements and community health center funding. (McAuliff, 2/29)

The Senate on Thursday passed a short-term spending bill that punts this weekend’s shutdown threat to later in the month, but leaves questions about how Congress will fund the government through the rest of the year. Senators voted 77-13 to send the funding measure to President Biden’s desk for his signature, just hours after the House voted overwhelmingly to pass the bill 320-99 and just a day before a tranche of government funding was set to expire. (Folley and Weaver, 2/29)

Republican lawmakers slammed U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a hearing on Thursday for failing to disclose his prostrate cancer diagnosis, his surgery and his subsequent hospitalization to President Joe Biden or even his deputy at the Pentagon. Austin, with support from Democrats on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, sought to dispel accusations that his secrecy jeopardized national security or that his unnoticed absence demonstrated his lack of influence in Biden's Democratic administration. (Stewart and Ali, 2/29)

Boston-based nonprofit About Fresh this week committed $60 million to support the White House’s Challenge to End Hunger and Build Communities over five years through its Fresh Connect program that will generate data for research on how food can be used as medicine. The nonprofit also pledged $2.2 million over three years to support its Fresh Truck program, which it is spinning off as a new independent nonprofit, that deploys retrofitted school buses as mobile markets bringing fresh food to neighborhoods. (Walia, 2/29)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: With Medical Debt Burdening Millions, A Financial Regulator Steps In To Help

When President Barack Obama signed legislation in 2010 to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he said the new agency had one priority: “looking out for people, not big banks, not lenders, not investment houses.” ... But as the U.S. health care system turns tens of millions of Americans into debtors, this financial watchdog is increasingly working to protect beleaguered patients, adding hospitals, nursing homes, and patient financing companies to the list of institutions that regulators are probing. (Levey, 3/1)