Providers Can’t Sue Over Low Medicaid Payments
Health care providers may not turn to the courts when they believe their state Medicaid program is not paying them enough for the services they deliver, the Supreme Court has decided. Instead, they must seek help from the federal government, [...]
How States View Medicaid Reform
What are states looking for from “Medicaid reform”? How do they evaluate the prospects of reform proposals – and how do they evaluate reforms that have been implemented? Across the country, states are pursuing Medicaid reform through section 1115 waivers, [...]
GAO Reports on CHIP Extension
As a House-approved bill that would extend authorization for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for two years awaits Senate consideration, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a mandated evaluation of the program. Among the GAO’s findings, it [...]
State Uses Innovation Funding to Improve Care for Urban Poor
New York's Medicaid program is taking advantage of federal innovation money to explore new approaches to serving low-income urban Medicaid patients. With the help of Delivery System Reform Incentive Payments (DSRIP), special Medicaid funding from the federal government, caregivers serving [...]
340B Program Faces Challenges, Change
A federal program that helps selected health care providers obtain discounted drugs for low-income patients they are serving on an outpatient basis may soon face major changes. The 340B prescription drug pricing program, created more than 20 years ago to [...]
NAUH Endorses Bill to Address Medicare “Doc Fix” Problem, March 25, 2015
In a letter to members of the House, NAUH has endorsed H.R. 2, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, which eliminates use of the Medicare sustainable growth rate formula (SGR) to determine Medicare payments to physicians and solves the [...]
Numbers Link Medicaid Expansion, Diabetes Diagnoses
One of the primary arguments made by the National Association of Urban Hospitals in favor of government reimbursement policies that support the work of private safety-net hospitals is that the patients they serve have had sporadic contact with the health [...]
OIG Reiterates Medicare, Medicaid Recommendations
Every year the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) examines the operations of various department offices, programs, and policies and offers recommendations for changes and improvements. Some of those recommendations are adopted and [...]
MedPAC Offers Recommendations on Payments, More
The federal agency that advises Congress on Medicare payment issues has submitted to Congress its annual recommendations for changes in how Medicare pays providers for the services they deliver to the nation’s seniors. Among the recommendations offered by the Medicare [...]
Congress Mulls Another Medicare Doc Fix
With a March 31 deadline looming before Medicare payments to physicians are scheduled to decline more than 20 percent, it appears Congress may be considering permanent repeal of the underlying root of the problem rather than yet another short-term patch. [...]
