The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission has sent its 2026 report to Congress.
The report – mandated by Congress – includes recommendations for:
- overseeing community engagement/work requirements in Medicaid, including MedPAC’s recommendation that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services develop a transparent plan through which it can monitor and evaluate community engagement requirements
improving CMS’s oversight of the use of automation in Medicaid prior authorization decisions- improving the accountability of states’ Medicaid managed care programs
- appropriate access to residential treatment services for Medicaid-enrolled youth with special behavioral health needs and disabilities
- facilitating the transition of children and youth with special health care needs to adult Medicaid coverage
- improving state and federal oversight of the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) and coordination between those levels of government
- Medicaid provider credentialing and enrollment
MACPAC is a non-partisan legislative branch agency that provides policy and data analysis and makes recommendations to Congress, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the states on a wide variety of issues affecting Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Its deliberations are highly influential among policymakers and are especially important for community safety-net hospitals because those hospitals care for larger numbers and higher proportions of Medicaid and CHIP patients than the typical American hospital.
Learn more from this MACPAC news release, which summarizes the report, and MACPAC’s June 2026 Report to Congress on Medicaid and CHIP.
