Inside Health Policy
By: Michele Stein
House lawmakers raised concerned the Medicaid data collected by CMS isn’t good enough for use in improving improper payment rates, and House oversight government operations subcommittee Chair Mark Meadows (R-NC) asked CMS Medicaid chief Tim Hill to give lawmakers a plan for how the agency will improve the data. Some Democrats suggested getting the attorneys general more involved to help reduce Medicaid improper payments. Medicaid had an improper pay rate of 10.1 percent in fiscal 2017, according to the government’s payment accuracy website, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle complained at a House oversight hearing Thursday (April 12) that the rate is too high.
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Meadows also asked Andy Schneider, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, to come up with, and provide to the committee, his top three recommendations for how to reduce the Medicaid improper pay rates. In his testimony, Schneider says: “There is a clear path forward for bringing it down: fully implement the provider screening and enrollment requirements that are already on the books. By identifying bad actors and keeping them out of the program, provider screening and enrollment will protect children and families and other Medicaid beneficiaries from substandard care while at the same time preventing the theft or diversion of federal and state funds from their intended use.”
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