In a major policy shift that could affect millions of low-income people, the Trump administration said Thursday it is offering a path for states that want to seek work requirements on Medicaid recipients.
Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said work and community involvement can make a positive difference in people’s lives and in their health.
The administration’s latest action spells out safeguards that states should consider to obtain federal approval for waivers imposing work requirements on “able-bodied” adults. Technically, those waivers would be “demonstration projects.” In practical terms, they would represent new requirements for beneficiaries in those states.
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Section 1115 Medicaid demonstration waivers provide states an avenue to test new approaches in Medicaid that differ from federal program rules. While there is great diversity in how states have used waivers over time, waivers generally reflect priorities identified by states and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). On March 14, 2017, the CMS sent a letter to state governors that signaled a willingness to use Section 1115 authority to support work requirements and the alignment of Medicaid programs with private insurance policies.
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Mississippi has received the first-ever 10-year extension of a Medicaid Section 1115 demonstration waiver, allowing the state to continue providing family planning services for people with income of up to 194% of the federal poverty level.
The CMS said the 10-year extension is part of the agency’s effort to give states greater flexibility in running their Medicaid programs, without having to ask the government for frequent approvals. Up to now, the agency typically granted Section 1115 waivers, which are supposed to be budget-neutral for the federal government, for five-year periods.
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California’s “Medi-Cal” program is one of the worst offenders when it comes to controlling costs. It’s getting worse not better. In fact, Medi-Cal is such a big spender it begs the question what is driving out of control spending in the Golden State – waste, fraud, abuse, incompetence, or all of the above? Every taxpayer in America should be asking these questions, as we are all footing the majority of the bill.
Over the past ten years, Medicaid spending in California has almost tripled, growing from $37 billion per year to a whopping $103 billion per year—including both state and federal funding. And things have only accelerated since the state expanded Medicaid to a new group of able-bodied adults.
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Democrats won a wave election in Virginia a month ago, not only winning the gubernatorial race but at least coming close to taking control of the legislature. Recounts are continuing in three races that could put Republicans in the minority, an astounding defeat for a party that assumed that they could maintain their position by doubling down on Donald Trump. Ralph Northam arguably has a broad mandate to pursue the Democratic agenda in the Old Dominion, but he tells the Washington Post that he wants to de-escalate the bitter partisanship first.
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How many individuals would knowingly want to enroll in a form of health coverage with “persistently inferior” outcomes? A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Oncology suggests that Medicaid provides those persistently inferior outcomes in the nation’s largest state of California, raising more questions about the program that represents the bulk of the coverage expansion under Obamacare. Overall, the study found “substantial and persistent disparities in survival for patients with either no or other public insurance compared with private insurance for all five cancer sites examined.”
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At the 2017 Forbes Healthcare Summit, I interviewed Seema Verma, Administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, about her policy agenda. CMS is one of the most important agencies in the federal government, administering programs spending over a trillion dollars a year, including Obamacare.
Our discussion was wide-ranging. Verma spoke about fellow Indianan Alex Azar, President Trump’s nominee for the post of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. She discussed her view of what CMS can do on drug pricing. She talked about the opioid crisis, and how to modernize the Medicare and Medicaid programs and empower patients to take charge of their own health care.
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Maine made history earlier this month by becoming the first state to adopt Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion via ballot initiative. The vote could inspire progressive activists in other states to push for similar referenda.
Expanding Medicaid to cover childless, able-bodied adults would blow a hole in state budgets while yielding few, if any, public health gains. That’s because Medicaid provides such low-quality care that its beneficiaries often experience worse health outcomes than people with no health insurance.
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The Affordable Care Act (ACA) set substantial new federal requirements for health insurance plans and the insurers that provide them. These requirements significantly altered the way insurance is regulated, which was traditionally left to the states. The ACA included in Section 1332 the option for states to apply for a waiver from many of these regulations. However, the myriad stipulations tied to these 1332 State Innovation Waivers limit states’ ability to regain control of their own insurance regulations. Further, states have no guarantee they will be granted a waiver, even if they meet all of the ACA’s requirements for obtaining one.
In response to these issues, two Senate committees have introduced (or at least drafted) legislation that would solve many of the problems that states have had obtaining 1332 waivers. In addition to easing some standards and shortening timeframes for decisions, the bills also provide a standard path for states to gain these waivers in certain circumstances.
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Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, Chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, issued a statement in June about a discussion draft of health reform legislation that was then before the Senate, the Better Care Reconciliation Act. He praised its life protections: “The Bishops value language in the legislation recognizing that abortion is not health care by attempting to prohibit the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortion or plans that cover it. While questions remain about the provisions and whether they will remain in the final bill, if retained and effective this would correct a flaw in the Affordable Care Act by fully applying the longstanding and widely-supported Hyde amendment protections. Full Hyde protections are essential and must be included in the final bill.”
The leadership in the Senate, the House, and the White House know that any future health reform legislation must contain these strong life protections.
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