The federal government intends to eliminate the premiums it has permitted some states to charge Medicaid beneficiaries in recent years.
While the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services originally permitted states to charge Medicaid premiums as an inducement to persuade those states to expand their Medicaid programs, studies have found that the premiums mostly discouraged people from enrolling or reenrolling in Medicaid.
CMS will compel Arkansas and Montana to phase out their Medicaid premiums by the end of the year and reportedly intends to impose similar requirements on the six other states that impose such fees.
Learn more about Medicaid premiums, their impact, and the administration’s plan to eliminate them in the NPR article “Biden administration will reverse Medicaid changes that Trump had OK’d in some states.”