Stop Hurting Hospitals That Serve the Poor, Congress Tells HHS
Medicare’s hospital readmissions reduction program is unfairly penalizing hospitals that serve especially large numbers of low-income patients, 34 members of Congress have written in a letter to recently appointed Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Centers for [...]
MedPAC: Keep Paying More For Medicare Primary Care Services
The federal government should continue paying extra for primary care services provided to Medicare patients, Congress has been told by its chief advisor on Medicare payment policy. According to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), the independent federal agency that [...]
MedPAC Again Calls for Site-Neutral Payments
Medicare should pay for certain medical services on a site-neutral basis and not pay different rates for the same services to inpatient rehabilitation hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. Or so says MedPAC, the independent federal agency charged with advising Congress [...]
One State Sees Major Drop in Uninsured
Are Affordable Care Act reforms putting a dent in the number of uninsured Americans? They certainly are in Minnesota. According to a study by the University of Minnesota’s State Health Access Data Assistance Center, the number of uninsured residents in [...]
States Using Reform Law to Experiment
A number of states are taking advantage of flexibility written into the Affordable Care Act to experiment with different ways to purchase, deliver, and pay for health care. Vermont, for example, is considering a single-payer program in which all state [...]
Waiting in Medicaid Limbo
More than 1.7 million people who have applied for Medicaid are still waiting for a decision on their eligibility. And some have been waiting for as long as eight months. More than half of those still waiting are in California [...]
Members of Congress Urge Delay in Medicare DSH Cuts
Fifty-eight members of the House of Representatives have written to House leadership asking them to delay the continued implementation of Affordable Care Act-mandated Medicare disproportionate share (Medicare DSH) cuts. The letter, to House Speaker John Boehner and minority leader Nancy [...]
CMS to Examine How States Set Medicaid Managed Care Rates
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is launching an initiative to explore how states set the rates they pay managed care organizations to serve Medicaid patients. The initiative consists of two parts: first, CMS is examining the adequacy [...]
NAUH Endorses Bill to Reform Controversial Medicare Program
The National Association of Urban Hospitals has written to Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) endorsing their new legislation, the Hospital Readmissions Program Accuracy and Accountability Act. The bill calls for adding risk adjustment to Medicare’s hospital readmissions [...]
Hospitals Reconsidering Charity Care Policies?
In the wake of Affordable Care Act policies that enhance access to health insurance, hospitals around the country are beginning to take a second look at their charity care policies. Some are charging co-pays to uninsured patients; others are moving [...]
