The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission has published its annual report and recommendations to Congress.

MACPAC’s report addresses three primary areas:  Medicaid managed care, telehealth, and Medicaid disproportionate share payments (Medicaid DSH).

With 80 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries now enrolled in managed care plans, MACPAC offers three major recommendations for improving Medicaid managed care efforts:

  • permit states to require all of their Medicaid beneficiaries to enroll in a managed care plan
  • extend Medicaid managed care section 1915(b) waivers from two to five years
  • permit states to obtain waivers to waive freedom of choice and selective contracting restrictions

MACPAC notes the growing use of telehealth by state Medicaid programs and encourages states to continue this expansion while learning more from the efforts of one another to use telehealth effectively.

Finally, MACPAC notes that it

…continues to find little meaningful relationship across the country between DSH allotments and number of uninsured individuals, hospitals’ uncompensated care costs, and the number of hospitals providing essential community services that have high levels of uncompensated care. Total hospital charity care and bad debt continue to fall, especially in states that expanded Medicaid coverage, but Medicaid shortfall showed an uptick as a result of increased Medicaid enrollment. Now that Congress has delayed DSH allotment reductions for two years, the Commission will explore opportunities to improve the targeting of DSH payments in future reports.

MACPAC is a non-partisan legislative branch agency that provides policy and data analysis and makes recommendations to Congress, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the states on a wide array of issues affecting Medicaid and the CHIP program.

Medicaid DSH is very important to the nation’s private safety-net hospitals so NAUH will carefully monitor the response to MACPAC’s Medicaid DSH recommendations.

Learn more about MACPAC’s recommendations to Congress in its Report to Congress on Medicaid and CHIP, which can be found here.