The Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has recently issued updated National Health Expenditure (NHE) estimates for 2020. The key takeaway is that the 2020 data offers little insight into future national health care spending trends, due to the “unprecedented government response to the global pandemic” and the […]
As the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) recently explained, state Medicaid and CHIP programs are required to cover at-home COVID-19 rapid tests, without cost-sharing, until at least one year after the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency. However, there seems to be substantial variation across state Medicaid and CHIP programs in how they actually cover […]
Faced with an easy opportunity to dramatically improve the lives of Georgians, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. On January 21, 2022, instead of moving forward with a backup plan to help over 400,000 Georgians get health insurance, Governor Kemp decided to file a lawsuit. It’s not the first […]
A wide range of organizations, including state/local governments, tribal entities, safety net providers, non-profits, schools, and others, may apply for up to $1.5 million over three years to connect eligible people to Medicaid or CHIP under a new CMS funding opportunity. A total of $49.4 million in funding will build on efforts initiated by the […]
In its first twelve months, the Biden administration has been unwinding the anti-Medicaid actions taken by its predecessor. The unwinding has been slow and methodical, and it is not yet finished. In part, this is because the new management at CMS has necessarily been focused on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and in part because […]
For the first time, CMS has posted state-specific rates of improper payments in Medicaid. This welcome exercise in transparency is a sea change in the Payment Error Rate Measurement (PERM) program, which CMS has been using since 2007 to help states improve the accuracy of their Medicaid payments. Until now, CMS has been reporting only […]
