Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
MACPAC Concerned About Prospect of Medicaid Block Grants
Members of the non-partisan legislative agency that advises Congress on Medicaid and CHIP issues expressed concern at their most recent meeting about the possibility of the federal government turning Medicaid into a block grant program. At their meeting in Washington, D.C. last week, members of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission discussed the steps they would need to take to advise policy-makers about the issues they would need to address in making such a major policy change and the possibility that such a shift would result in a [...]
MACPAC Meets, Discusses Medicaid DSH Issues
Last week the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission met in Washington, D.C. to review aspects of its required March report to Congress and to address other Medicaid and CHIP issues. Included on the agenda of the meeting were: a review of chapters of the March report on Medicaid disproportionate share (Medicaid DSH) and monitoring of access to care; alternative approaches to state financing of their Medicaid programs; Medicaid coverage for low-income adults; and Medicaid program integrity issues. See the presentations used to help guide these discussions here, on [...]
Defining “Success” in Addressing Social Determinants
With a growing number of programs designed to address the social determinants of individuals’ health care challenges, the question arises as to how to define “success” in those approaches. A recent article on the Health Affairs Blog addresses this question by illustrating the many variables that go into determining what constitutes “success” and suggesting that success be viewed from a number of perspectives, including: success for entire communities success from the perspective of individual patients success based on the effectiveness of addressing specific social needs (such as housing, transportation, or [...]
Participation in Alternative Payment Models Rises
In 2017 nearly 360,000 clinicians will participate in Medicare and Medicaid Alternative Payment Model programs sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. CMS also reports that this year 570 accountable care organizations, including 131 that bear risk, will serve more than 12.3 million Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. In addition, nearly 3000 primary care practices will participate in advanced primary care medical home models Find more about the growth of participation in CMS’s alternative payment models, including descriptions of the different models and breakdowns in the numbers of participants, [...]
Medicaid Block Grants 101
Amid a great deal of speculation about the possibility of Congress and the new Trump administration turning Medicaid into a block grant program, Kaiser Health News has taken a step back to ask the question “What does this even mean?” Among the issues the new article addresses are: how a Medicaid block program might work how block grants differ from per capita caps why block grants are so interesting and so appealing to some public officials the chances of Medicaid becoming a block grant program See the Kaiser Health News [...]