Medicaid DSH

Safety-Net Hospitals Under the Gun

Safety-net hospitals across the country face a new challenge: adjusting to several cuts in the supplemental payments they receive from the federal government to help them serve the low-income residents of the communities in which they are located. First there is a $2 billion cut in Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments (Medicaid DSH). These are payments made to hospitals that serve especially large numbers of low-income patients. These payments help safety-net hospitals with the unreimbursed expenses they incur caring for such patients. This cut, mandated by the Affordable Care Act but twice delayed by Congress, took effect on January 1. [...]

iqtsupport2018-01-19T06:00:18-05:00January 19, 2018|Affordable Care Act, hospitals, Medicaid, Medicare, Medicare cuts|

MACPAC Meets

The non-partisan legislative branch agency that advises Congress, the administration, and the states on Medicaid and CHIP-related issues met recently in Washington, D.C. The following is the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission’s own summary of its meeting. The December 2017 meeting of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission began with a brief update on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Although federal funding for the CHIP expired at the end of September, legislation to renew funding was still pending in Congress. The Commission then heard from a panel discussing state tools to manage drug utilization [...]

iqtsupport2017-12-20T06:00:38-05:00December 20, 2017|Medicaid|

CMS Takes First Steps Toward Medicaid DSH Cuts

Federal funds allocated to states to make Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments (Medicaid DSH) payments would be reduced beginning in FY 2018 under a new rule proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The Medicaid DSH cuts, mandated by the Affordable Care Act but delayed several times at the behest of Congress, would come in the form of reduced Medicaid DSH allocations to individual states, with the size of those allocation cuts based on the nature of individual states’ Medicaid programs and changes in the number of uninsured patients in individual states. The cuts were established in the [...]

iqtsupport2017-07-31T06:00:34-04:00July 31, 2017|Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, hospitals, Medicaid|

Hospital Uncompensated Care Down

As was surely expected, reforms introduced through implementation of the Affordable Care Act have driven down uncompensated care costs for many hospitals. How much? A new study published by the Commonwealth Fund offers the following findings: uncompensated care declines in expansion states are substantial relative to profit margins; for every dollar of uncompensated care costs hospitals in expansion states had in 2013, the Affordable Care Act erased 41 cents by 2015; and Medicaid expansion reduced uncompensated care burdens for safety-net hospitals that are not made whole by Medicaid disproportionate share payments (Medicaid DSH). Learn more, including how the decline in [...]

iqtsupport2017-05-15T06:00:48-04:00May 15, 2017|Affordable Care Act, hospitals|

MACPAC Looks at Medicaid DSH

Hospitals that serve especially large numbers of Medicaid and low-income patients still need Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments (Medicaid DSH) to avoid red ink despite the expansion of Medicaid and the increase in the number of uninsured people fostered by the Affordable Care Act. So concludes the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) the non-partisan legislative branch agency that advises Congress, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the states on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program issues. In its March 2017 report to Congress, MACPAC writes that In both expansion and non-expansion [...]

iqtsupport2017-03-23T06:00:53-04:00March 23, 2017|Affordable Care Act, hospitals, Medicaid|

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 MACPAC’s web site.

iqtsupport2017-02-01T06:00:51-05:00February 1, 2017|Medicaid|