Ways and Means Seeks to Cut Medicare Red Tape
The House Ways and Means Committee’s Health Subcommittee has launched a new initiative to attempt to improve the delivery of Medicare services and eliminate statutory and regulatory obstacles to more effective care delivery.
The subcommittee describes its “Medicare Red Tape Relief Project” as
…a new initiative to deliver relief from the regulations and mandates that impede innovation, drive up costs, and ultimately stand in the way of delivering better care for Medicare beneficiaries.
In support of this initiative, the committee has announced a three-part approach in which it will seek feedback from stakeholders, host roundtables with stakeholders across the country, and pursue congressional action to address the problems identified through this process.
As part of the first step, the Health Subcommittee is inviting stakeholders to submit information about regulatory and statutory obstacles they have encountered and how they believe the federal government should address those obstacles.
Learn more about the Medicare Red Tape Relief Project and how stakeholders can report problems and recommend improvements from this subcommittee news release.
Among the possibilities state lawmakers are discussing: tighter rules for participation, greater efficiency, work and work search requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, charging premiums for high-income families for which Medicaid provides coverage for their profoundly disabled children, and a pilot program to test whether a recipient care management program might eliminate medical errors, improve recipient health, and reduce health care costs.
Included in the June/July edition are articles about the status of Pennsylvania’s FY 2018 budget, including possible changes in the state human services code; a delay in awarding new HealthChoices contracts; new quality initiatives in the state’s contracts with HealthChoices managed care organizations; an update on the implementation of Community HealthChoices, the state’s new program of managed long-term services and supports; and more.
According to the PHC4 report,
Among the issues addressed in the letter are how the House-passed proposal would detract from the role of Medicaid in fighting the state’s opioid crisis; the proposed reduction in tax credits to help purchase health insurance; the challenge posed by a per capita approach to Medicaid financing; the potential loss of health care jobs; the likelihood of large numbers of Pennsylvanians losing their health insurance and state Medicaid costs rising significantly; and the erosion of consumer protections.
, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine addresses the question of what social risk factors might be worth considering in Medicare value-based payment programs and how those risk factors might be reflected in value-based payments.