House Members Protest Site-Neutral Payment Proposal
138 members of the House of Representatives have written to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Seema Verma to protest CMS’s proposal to extend Medicare outpatient site-neutral payment policies to off-campus, provider-based outpatient departments specifically exempted from such policies [...]
New Report Looks at Medicaid Buy-In
While there has been a great deal of public discussion of late about “Medicare for all,” less attention has been paid to the concept of permitting people to buy into their state’s Medicaid program. Now, the Rockefeller Institute of Government [...]
Medicaid APMs Moving in New Directions
For the most part, states’ use of alternative payment models in their Medicaid programs so far have focused on the work done by primary and acute-care providers. Now, a number of states are starting to extend their use of APMs [...]
Proposed “Public Charge” Regulation Could Hit Medicaid, Hospitals
If a regulation proposed by the Department of Homeland Security to redefine what constitutes a “public charge” is adopted, millions of people currently enrolled in the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program might choose to disenroll from those programs rather [...]
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 October agenda were: managing prescription opioid use in Medicare Part D opioids and alternatives in hospital settings: [...]
“Public Charge” Proposal Raises Potential Issues for Safety-Net Hospitals
A proposal by the Department of Homeland Security could make it more difficult for some immigrants to stay in the U.S. permanently by scrutinizing more closely whether they might become a “public charge” if they remain in the country and [...]
Hospitals Ask Congress to Protect 340B Program
The leaders of more than 700 hospitals and health systems have written to congressional leaders to ask them to protect the section 340B prescription drug discount program. The letter states that We are concerned about recent regulatory actions that have [...]
CMS Promises Enhanced Use of Medicaid Data to Improve Program Results
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Seema Verma intends to increase federal use of data reported by the states to improve the performance of state Medicaid programs. In an article published on the CMS blog, Verma wrote that Through [...]
Senators Ask CMS to Back Off Medicare Outpatient Proposal
Nearly half of the members of the Senate have written to CMS asking the agency to withdraw its proposal to make more Medicare outpatient payments on a site-neutral basis. In the letter, 48 senators note that in the 2015 Bipartisan [...]
Medicare Site-Neutral Outpatient Payment Proposal Would Have Disproportionate Impact
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ proposal to make more Medicare outpatient payments on a site-neutral basis would significantly cut Medicare’s overall outpatient spending but most of that cut would be borne by just a few hospitals. A report [...]
