The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission met last week in Washington, D.C. to discuss a variety of Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program issues.
MACPAC, the non-partisan legislative branch agency that performs policy and data analysis and makes recommendations to Congress, the administration, and the states, addressed a number of issues during the meeting. Among them it discussed Medicaid managed long-term services and supports (MLTSS) and voted to recommend that states be given the opportunity to seek permission to make Medicaid beneficiary enrollment in managed care plans mandatory through revisions of their state plan amendment rather than by seeking Medicaid waivers.
The commission also heard presentations on and discussed:
- the integration of substance use disorder treatment with other Medicaid-covered services
- residential substance abuse treatment and the exclusion of institutions for mental disease from treatment options
- stakeholder experiences with MLTSS
- Medicaid hospital payments
- Medicaid managed care
- the “Money Follows the Person” demonstration program
- appeals for the dually eligible
MACPAC’s deliberations are important to private safety-net hospitals because those hospitals serve so many Medicaid patients. While MACPAC’s recommendations are binding on neither the administration nor Congress, it is a respected source of insight and ideas and its recommendations often find their way into future regulations, legislation, and policy.
Go here for a summary of the meeting and links to the presentations used for these subjects.
