High-Deductible Plans Driving Rise in Hospital Bad Debt
Hospital bad debt rose in 2018 after several years of decline, and according to Moody’s, high-deductible health insurance is one of the major drivers of that increase. According to the bond rating agency, non-profit hospitals are seeing growing amounts of [...]
Back Off 340B Data Collection, NASH Tells CMS
The federal government should not impose a new, major data reporting requirement on 340B-eligible hospitals to support the implementation of a new policy that federal courts twice have rejected, NASH told the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services last week. [...]
Administration Shares Regulatory Priorities for 2020
The Trump administration’s health care regulatory priorities for 2020 have been outlined by the Office of Management and Budget in a newly released “Statement of Regulatory Priorities for Fiscal Year 2020.” The statement, an annual OMB document, organizes the priorities [...]
Medicaid DSH Cut Delayed
Cuts in Medicaid DSH payments to hospitals will be delayed for another month after Congress passed, and the president signed, a continuing resolution to fund the federal government through December 20. A cut in federal Medicaid disproportionate share (Medicaid DSH) [...]
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 [...]
