Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
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 September agenda were: context for Medicare payment policy the effects of Medicare Advantage “spillover” on Medicare fee-for-service spending and coding evaluation of the hospital readmissions reduction program examining the effects of competitive bidding for diabetes testing supplies and improving payment policies for DMEPOS products excluded from competitive bidding a value incentive program for post-acute-care providers Medicare indirect medical education (IME) policy, concerns, and considerations for revising MedPAC [...]
ACA Has Reduced Insurance Disparities
The Affordable Care Act is responsible for a major reduction in the disparity of insurance status among racial and ethnic minorities. According to a new Commonwealth Fund analysis, All U.S. racial and ethnic groups saw comparable, proportionate declines in uninsured rates… However, because uninsured rates started off much higher among Hispanic and black non-Hispanic adults than among white non-Hispanic adults, the coverage gap between blacks and whites declined from 11.0 percentage points in 2013 to 5.3 percentage points in 2017. Likewise, the coverage gap between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites dropped [...]
Uninsured Rate Rose in 2017
The rate of uninsured Americans rose in 2017, the first such increase since implementation of the Affordable Care Act. According to a new Urban Institute study, The increasing uninsurance rate between 2016 and 2017 was driven by losses of private nongroup coverage, such as that purchased in the health insurance marketplaces, and decreases in Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage (-0.4 percentage points each). In addition, Overall, coverage losses were concentrated in the 19 states that did not expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act by July [...]
Medicaid Rolls Could Include Too Many People in Some States
Some states appear to have more Medicaid participants than they do individuals who meet the program’s income eligibility requirements. Or so suggests a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. According to the study, an analysis of nine states that expanded their Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act found 800,000 more Medicaid participants than it did individuals who meet Medicaid’s income eligibility criteria. The study acknowledges that the actual numbers may not be as great because some people qualify for Medicaid based on disabilities and factors other [...]
Stakeholders Respond to CMS “Patients Over Paperwork” RFI
More than 400 stakeholders responded to the federal government’s request for ideas to reduce the administrative burden associated with serving publicly insured patients. The request was disseminated via a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services request for information that was part of the agency’s “Patients over Paperwork” initiative. Among the groups that responded were the American Hospital Association, The American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the Critical Access Hospital Coalition, the Coalition of Long-Term Acute-Care Hospitals, the National Rural Association of Rural Health Clinics, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the [...]