Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission

MACPAC Meets

The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission met for two days last week in Washington, D.C. The following is MACPAC’s own summary of the sessions. MACPAC looked ahead to its June 2019 report to Congress on the initial day of the March 2019 Commission meeting. In the morning, sessions focused on potential recommendations to create a grace period for states to determine coverage policies for outpatient prescription drugs and removing or raising the rebate cap; a uniform definition of therapeutic foster care; and treatment of third-party payment when determining hospitals’ Medicaid shortfall for disproportionate share hospital payments. In the [...]

Docs Still Less Likely to Treat Medicaid Patients

Medicaid patients continue to be last in line when it comes to finding doctors willing to serve them. At least that’s the conclusion drawn in a new analysis prepared by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission. According to a presentation delivered at a MACPAC meeting last week: Doctors are less likely to accept new Medicaid patients (70.8 percent) than they are patients insured by Medicare (85.3 percent) or private insurers (90 percent), with a much greater differential in acceptance rates among specialists and psychiatrists. Pediatricians, general surgeons, and ob/gyns have a higher acceptance rate of Medicaid patients than [...]