Hospital groups and other health care interest organizations have expressed strong opposition to a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposal to ease requirements that states ensure adequate access to care for their Medicaid population.
Under current federal Medicaid law, states must periodically review their Medicaid provider networks to ensure that Medicaid recipients have adequate access to care. Under a March CMS proposal, that requirement would exempt states from performing such reviews if at least 85 percent of their Medicaid population is enrolled in a managed care plan and similarly exempt them from reviewing the impact on their provider networks of rate cuts of less than four percent during a single state fiscal year or six percent over two consecutive years.
Fearing that the proposal could jeopardize access to care for Medicaid recipients, the overwhelming majority of comments submitted to CMS expressed strong opposition to the proposal. Among those doing so were the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Federation of American Hospitals, the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, the Tennessee Hospital Association, the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and others.
For a closer look at what the regulation proposes and how various groups have responded to it, see these Fierce Healthcare and Healthcare Dive articles.