NAUH has expressed its opposition to a proposed change in how the federal government allocates Medicaid disproportionate share (Medicaid DSH) funding to states.

In a formal comment letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which proposed the change in state Medicaid DSH allotments, NAUH wrote that it opposed CMS’s proposed division of the cuts between so-called “low-DSH states” and “non-low-DSH states,” maintaining that non-low-DSH states would, under the CMS proposal, bear too great a share of the overall reductions of state Medicaid DSH allotments.

The Affordable Care Act requires a reduction of federal Medicaid DSH spending based on the expectation that improved access to health insurance would result in fewer uninsured Americans – as it has.  For the past several years Congress delayed implementation of this requirement but its most recent delay expires in 2018 and in July CMS published a proposed rule outlining how it would implement the statutory requirement.

NAUH’s objection is to how CMS proposes implementing that reduction.

See NAUH’s formal comment letter to CMS here.