Medicaid

Fifty-nine percent of Medicaid beneficiaries under the age of 21 received a well-child screening in fiscal 2017 -- a decrease of five percentage points from fiscal 2010 and well short of CMS’ target ratio of 80%, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

Senate Appropriations health subcommittee Chair Roy Blunt (R-MO) released a fiscal 2020 HHS funding bill on Wednesday (Sept. 18) that would extend some health programs set to expire on Sept. 30 for an additional year, despite work done by the House Energy & Commerce Committee and the Senate health committee this summer to extend these programs for a longer period of time.

Mental health and substance use treatment advocates are calling on Congress to reauthorize funding for mental health clinics, remove barriers to medication-assisted treatment and allow mental health counselors to bill Medicare.

State efforts to manage the costs of care for high-expenditure Medicaid beneficiaries have had mixed results, and the most significant barriers to better care management are difficulties dealing with social determinants of health, shortages of providers in rural areas and an inability to contact some beneficiaries, the Government Accountability Office says in a new report.

Plans say prior authorization for medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for individuals with substance use disorders helps the treatment be used safely and effectively, but providers are worried that prior authorization is a barrier to treatment in the middle of an opioid crisis.

The Nebraska Supreme Court has declined to hear a lawsuit -- at least for now -- that seeks to force state officials to speed up their implementation of the state’s voter-approved Medicaid expansion.

The Center for American Progress is pushing a number of policy options to help struggling rural hospitals stay open, some of which echo policy platforms from Democratic presidential hopefuls, and the left-leaning group is also imploring the Trump administration to stop allowing states to waive non-emergency medical transportation benefits in Medicaid.

House Republicans at a hearing Tuesday (Sept. 10) worried that passing federal legislation to ensure Medicaid coverage for beneficiaries up to one year after giving birth would prevent states from deciding how long new mothers should be covered by the program.

Maternal health advocates applauded a CMS issue brief on improving rural maternal health, but some advocates say the agency can still go further to extend Medicaid for postpartum women, and one researcher added that the report’s lack of a discussion on Medicaid expansion is a glaring omission.