Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
ACA Improved Hospital Financial Performance
Hospitals in states that expanded their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act enjoyed improved financial performance, a new analysis has found. According to the report from the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and based on FY 2015 data, In states that expanded Medicaid through the ACA, hospitals had $5.0 million in increased Medicaid revenue and $3.2 million decreased uncompensated care costs, on average per hospital. Hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid through the ACA improved average operating margins by 2.5 percentage points. Small hospitals, for-profit and [...]
New County Health Rankings Published
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has published health rankings for every county in the country. Among the health or health-related factors for which the rankings provide data are: demographic information quality of life health factors percentage of population uninsured supply of health care providers and services socio-economic factors the physical environment Find the county health rankings here.
To Require Work or Not to Require Work
That is the question policy-makers are asking as they consider imposing work requirements on healthy Medicaid participants. In recent years a number of states have attempted to establish such a requirement, only to have their requests to do so rejected by regulators in Washington, and a clause permitting states to establish such a requirement was included last month in the eventually sidetracked American Health Care Act. Even now, a Kentucky Medicaid waiver application under consideration by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services includes a work requirement. Does the lack [...]
CMS Shares Evaluation of Medicare-Medicaid Financial Alignment Efforts
In 2011 the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched a “Medicare-Medicaid Financial Alignment Initiative” that seeks “…to provide Medicare-Medicaid enrollees with a better care experience and to better align the financial incentives of the Medicare and Medicaid programs.” How is that initiative working so far? CMS recently released three reports that evaluate different aspects of the program. Those reports are: “Early Findings on Care Coordination in Capitated Medicare-Medicaid Plans under the Financial Alignment Initiative” “Beneficiary Experience: Early Findings from Focus Groups with Enrollees Participating in the Financial Alignment Initiative” [...]
Temporarily Gone But Not Forgotten
While last week’s withdrawal of the American Health Care Act at least temporarily halted talk of immediate repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act, at least one aspect of that proposed legislation, often discussed in the past, is sure to arise in the future as well: replacing the current manner in which the federal government matches state Medicaid funding with Medicaid per capita limits or Medicaid block grants. In a new issue brief, the Kaiser Family Foundation examines how a switch to per capita limits or block grants might [...]