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Congressional leaders are closing in on a deal to fund the government into early next year, along with tens of billions of dollars in disaster aid, as they work to avoid a holiday shutdown. The burgeoning agreement comes after weeks of House and Senate leadership negotiations, which included top appropriators, ahead of the Dec. 20 deadline. Text of the funding bill is expected over the weekend or early next week to allow both chambers to pass the measure before lawmakers leave town until January. (Carney and Scholtes, 12/12)

House Republicans want to know whether pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) CVS Caremark violated federal antitrust laws by threatening independent pharmacies to keep them from using money-saving tools outside the PBM’s network. In a letter to CVS obtained by The Hill, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked the company for documents and communications about pharmaceutical hubs, a type of digital pharmacy service that can streamline the process of accessing and managing complex, high-cost specialty medications for patients. (Weixel, 12/12)

Executives at the health insurance behemoth Centene on Thursday had a clear message to Republicans who are about to take control of the federal government: Think twice before you cut health care programs. (Herman, 12/12)

Members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) seemed favorable Thursday to a proposed recommendation to Congress that Medicare should pay physicians based on the rate of medical inflation and give primary care doctors who serve low-income beneficiaries an extra pay bump. "I think the chair's recommendation is directionally correct," said commission member Cheryl Damberg, PhD, MPH, of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. (Frieden, 12/12)

The idea of requiring site-neutral payments in Medicare -- in which providers would be reimbursed at the same rate for performing the same service, regardless of where it's performed -- appears to be gaining steam on Capitol Hill. "We are decreasing the out-of-pocket expense for someone receiving the exact same care at the same doctor's office with the same equipment and the same nurse" in cases where the cost of the service increased after the hospital bought the doctor's practice, Sen. Bill Cassidy, MD (R-La.), said Wednesday at a site-neutral payment event sponsored by Politico and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Cassidy, ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) Committee, was referring to a bill which he and Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) are developing. (Frieden, 12/12)