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MACPAC Meets, Discusses Medicaid Issues

Members of the non-partisan legislative branch agency that advises Congress, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the states on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program matters met in Washington recently to discuss a number of issues.
On the agenda of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission were the following issues:

  • state Medicaid flexibility
  • state Medicaid responses to fiscal pressures
  • a study requested by Congress on mandatory and optional benefits and populations
  • current Medicaid parallels to per capita financing options
  • illustrations of state-level effects of per capita cap design elements
  • high-cost hepatitis C drugs
  • the role of section 1915(b) waivers in Medicaid managed care

Because Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals serve so many Medicaid and CHIP participants, MACPAC’s deliberations are especially important and relevant to them.
Go here for a link to overviews of these issues and the presentations offered at the MACPAC meeting.

2017-03-23T06:00:24+00:00March 23rd, 2017|Federal Medicaid issues, Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals, Uncategorized|Comments Off on MACPAC Meets, Discusses Medicaid Issues

Medicaid Limits on High-Cost Drugs Illegal?

With the recent proliferation of high-cost drugs threatening many states’ Medicaid budgets, some of those states have attempted to impose limits on the use of those drugs.
But are those limits legal?
That is the question addressed in a new report in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which notes that

Current restrictions seem to violate federal Medicaid law, which requires states to cover drugs consistent with their U.S. Food and Drug Administration labels.

So are those limits legal?  Or will patients and their advocates have grounds to challenge limits to their access to potentially life-saving or life-improving drugs?
Learn more about this situation in the new report “Restrictions for Medicaid Reimbursement of Sofosbuvir for the Treatment of Hepatitis C Virus Infection in the United States” here, on the web site of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

2015-07-06T06:00:46+00:00July 6th, 2015|Uncategorized|Comments Off on Medicaid Limits on High-Cost Drugs Illegal?
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