Federal Reports

The Executive Office of the President’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, Accounting of Drug Control Funding and Performance Summary circular, requires federal agencies to submit an annual detailed accounting of their funds and activities related to the National Drug Control Program. The circular also requires Inspectors General to evaluate the reliability of assertions made in the agency’s report. The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviewed VA management’s assertions concerning its drug methodology, application of methodology, reprogrammings or transfers, and fund control notices. A previous OIG report, Audit of VA’s Financial Statements for Fiscal Years 2018 and 2017, identified five material weaknesses that repeated from previous years’ reporting. CliftonLarsenAllen LLC identified two additional significant deficiencies while providing an unmodified opinion on VA’s Fiscal Year 2018 consolidated financial statements. Beyond the identified issues, the OIG believes that the assertions in the submission of this report are fairly stated in all material respects, based on the attestation review and the criteria set forth in the circular. The OIG is not expressing any opinion on the assertions in the submission because it conducted an attestation review, which does not require a concluding opinion. This report is one of two OIG publications that examine VA’s reporting requirements to ONDCP.

The Office of Inspector General examined the status of NASA’s environmental remediation activities at SSFL and assessed the extent to which the Agency is conducting these efforts in a cost-effective manner.

The Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA) prohibits CMS from awarding a Competitive Bidding Program contract to a supplier of diabetes test strips if the supplier's bid does not cover at least 50 percent, by volume, of the types of diabetes test strips provided to Medicare beneficiaries. This is known as the "50-percent rule." MIPPA requires OIG to determine the market shares of the types of diabetes test strips before each round of competitive bidding to assist CMS in ensuring that bidding suppliers meet the 50-percent rule. Initially, compliance with the 50 percent rule was assessed using mail order claims only. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 amended the 50-percent rule by requiring that, for bids on or after January 1, 2019, CMS must use data from the non-mail order Medicare market as well as the mail-order one. Since 2010, OIG has been conducting evaluations of the Medicare market shares of diabetes test strips provided via mail order. This is the first OIG evaluation of Medicare market shares for diabetes test strips provided via non-mail order.