Improper Medicare Payments Down in FY 2019
The amount of improper Medicare payments made by the federal government fell $7 billion in federal fiscal year 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reports. FY 2019 marked the third consecutive year that improper fee-for-service payments have fallen. [...]
Improper Medicaid, CHIP Payments on the Rise
The rate at which Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program made improper payments rose considerably in federal fiscal year 2019. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Medicaid improper payment rate in FY 2019 was 14.9 [...]
Medicaid Block Grants Hit Bump in Road
The drive toward encouraging states to implement Medicaid block grants hit a bump in the road last week when the formal guidance for states that Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Seema Verma suggested was imminent apparently became not-so [...]
MACPAC Posts Meeting Transcript
The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission met in Washington, D.C. earlier this month. The issues on MACPAC’s agenda were: state readiness to report mandatory core set measures analysis of buprenorphine prescribing patterns among advanced practitioners in Medicaid Medicaid’s [...]
Feds Open Door for Exemptions from Medicaid IMD Exclusion
New federal guidelines will make it easier for state Medicaid programs to cover mental health services provided in institutions for mental diseases (IMD). For years, Medicaid regulations greatly limited the ability of states to pay for care – generally, care [...]
Verma Addresses Medicaid Issues
Yesterday, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Seema Verma spoke at a conference of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. In addition to discussing a proposed regulation posted earlier in the day that would introduce changes in the regulation [...]
MedPAC Meets
Last week the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission met in Washington, D.C. to discuss a number of Medicare payment issues. The issues on MedPAC’s November agenda were: congressional request on health care provider consolidation increasing the supply of primary care physicians [...]
MACPAC Looks at Medicaid DSH
At a time when cuts in Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments (Medicaid DSH) are still scheduled for the current fiscal year and some in Congress are calling for a new approach to allotting DSH funds among the states, the Medicaid [...]
MACPAC Meets
The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission met for two days last week in Washington, D.C. The following is MACPAC’s own summary of the sessions. The Commission devoted its Thursday morning discussion to integration of care for beneficiaries who [...]
Medicaid Expansion Brings Improvements to Expansion States
States that expanded their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act have experienced fewer hospital admissions, shorter lengths of stays in the hospital, and lower hospital costs, according to a new Health Affairs study. Specifically, they experienced: a 3.1 percent [...]
