Medicaid expansion Archives - Page 4 of 8 - Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania

Millions to Fall Into Coverage Gap

More than five million adult Americans will fall into the Affordable Care Act’s Supreme Court-created coverage gap in states that have chosen not to expand their Medicaid programs.
In those 26 states, adults whom the reform law intended to be covered by Medicaid will still earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid yet also will fall below the income level needed to qualify for Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies.
This gap was created when the Supreme Court made the reform law-mandated Medicaid expansion optional for individual states, and so far, 26 states have chosen not to expand their Medicaid programs. The result, according to a new issue brief from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, is that 5.2 million low-income adults whom the law intended to enroll in Medicaid will remain uninsured.
More than 280,000 of these people reside in Pennsylvania, which has not yet expanded its Medicaid program. Many will continue to be served by the state’s private safety-net hospitals, which will not be paid for the care they provide.
To learn more about these people and why they will remain uninsured, read the study “The Coverage Gap: Uninsured Poor Adults in States That Do Not Expand Medicaid.” Find the study here, on the web site of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-10-16T10:08:33+00:00October 16th, 2013|Affordable Care Act, Health care reform, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

Arkansas Medicaid Plan Gains Federal Approval; Harbinger for PA?

A bid by the state of Arkansas to expand access to Medicaid by enabling newly eligible recipients to use federal Medicaid funds to purchase health insurance has been approved by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
While the Arkansas Medicaid proposal is not identical to Governor Corbett’s recently released “Healthy Pennsylvania” plan, the two share a key common component: the use of federal Medicaid funds to enable newly eligible recipients to purchase private insurance through new health insurance exchanges that open for business on October 1.
The path to federal approval for Healthy Pennsylvania remains challenging, but the Arkansas ruling appears to be a clear sign that the federal government is receptive to one of the key components of Governor Corbett’s proposal.
To learn more about the Arkansas Medicaid plan and the federal decision to approve it, see this San Francisco Chronicle article.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-10-01T06:00:02+00:00October 1st, 2013|Affordable Care Act, Health care reform, Healthy PA, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

More Than Better Pay Needed to Lure Docs to Medicaid

Primary care physicians want more than better reimbursement as an inducement to serve more Medicaid patients.
They also want simpler administrative procedures, faster payment, and lower costs associated with treating those patients.
These findings come from a survey of primary care physicians in Washington state.
Recruiting more primary care physicians to serve Medicaid patients is more important than ever because many states will be taking advantage of Affordable Care Act incentives to expand eligibility for their Medicaid programs.
The survey results and more can be found in the article “Physicians May Need More Than Higher Reimbursements to Expand Medicaid Participation: Findings From Washington State,” which was published in the September 2013 edition of the journal Health Affairs. Find that article here.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-09-18T06:00:34+00:00September 18th, 2013|Affordable Care Act, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

Reform Will Give Medicaid Population a New Look

Once the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion is implemented, the Medicaid population as a whole will be younger, whiter, healthier, and more male but also more likely to smoke and drink to excess than it is today.
That is the conclusion reached by in a new report published in the Annals of Family Medicine.
This means that spending per recipient may not be as great for new Medicaid recipients as it is for current beneficiaries and that a different patient population may need different approaches to addressing different health challenges.
Learn more about the study and its implications in the article “Potential Adult Medicaid Beneficiaries Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Compared With Current Adult Medicaid Beneficiaries, which can be found here , on the web site of the journal Annals of Family Medicine.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-09-13T06:00:10+00:00September 13th, 2013|Affordable Care Act, Health care reform|Comments Off

The Implications of Rejecting Medicaid Expansion

Twenty-one states have decided not to expand their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act and another six states remain undecided.
How will these decisions affect these states and their residents? How many people who might have become eligible for Medicaid will remain uninsured? How much federal Medicaid revenue will these states forgo? How will these decisions affect hospitals’ uncompensated care costs? How might payments to hospitals be affected?
Pennsylvania is one of the six states where Medicaid expansion is still being considered, and the report includes specific projections for the commonwealth. The Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania (SNAP) supports Medicaid expansion in the state.
A new study from the Urban Institute attempts to quantify the answers to these and other questions. Find “The Cost of Not Expanding Medicaid” here , on the web site of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-07-25T06:00:48+00:00July 25th, 2013|Health care reform, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania|Comments Off

Closer Scrutiny Needed for Medicaid Managed Care?

With Medicaid expansion about to begin in many states and managed care expected to be a major tool in that expansion, advocates are suggesting that states need to do a better job of monitoring the performance of the managed care plans that serve their Medicaid population.
Currently, according to advocates, different states monitor their Medicaid managed care plans for different aspects of their performance and some states do a better job than others. With relatively few federal standards, state-to-state comparisons either are difficult or impossible.
Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have at least some Medicaid patients enrolled in managed care plans, and together, those plans receive about one out of every four dollars that the states and the federal government spend on Medicaid.
With nearly all of the state’s Medicaid recipients now in managed care plans, this issue is of special interest to Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals.
Read more about the issue, the challenges, and why this issue is now receiving attention in this Kaiser Health News report .

PA Safety Net Admin2013-07-10T06:00:18+00:00July 10th, 2013|Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

A Graphic Look at Medicaid Expansion

The Stateline web site features a number of new, excellent graphs that depict various aspects of Affordable Care Act-inspired Medicaid expansion.
The graphs show where expansion is moving forward, where it has been rejected, and where decisions have yet to be made; where Americans get their health insurance today; who might be eligible for Medicaid; and the cost of Medicaid expansion.
Find the graphs here , on the Stateline web site.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-06-12T06:00:12+00:00June 12th, 2013|Health care reform|Comments Off

Medicaid Pay Raise Isn’t Reaching Docs

The Affordable Care Act-mandated fee increase for primary care physicians serving Medicaid patients is not reaching those physicians.
Or so reports the Washington Post, which writes that only a few states are paying primary care providers more money to serve Medicaid patients.
The pay raise is considered an important tool to help encourage more primary care providers to serve Medicaid patients at a time when Medicaid enrollment is expected to increase significantly because of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion provisions. Under the health reform law, Medicaid payments for primary care services, traditionally very low, are to be raised to the same level as Medicare primary care payments for two years – calendar years 2013 and 2014.
Five months into 2013, however, only Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Michigan are making the higher payments.
Pennsylvania is among the states still not making the enhanced Medicaid payments, but state officials have promised further information about their plans in the coming days.
Learn more about the thinking behind the pay raise and why most states still are not paying it in this Washington Post article.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-05-21T06:00:54+00:00May 21st, 2013|Health care reform, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

DPW Secretary: Medicaid Expansion No Sooner Than 2015

Even if Pennsylvania decides to go ahead and expand its Medicaid program, such expansion is unlikely before January of 2015, according to the state official who would be responsible for leading that expansion.
State officials still have not decided whether the state will expand its program as envisioned under the Affordable Care Act, but even if they decide to expand, Department of Public Welfare acting secretary Beverly Mackereth has indicated that the work involved in such an undertaking makes it unlikely that expansion could begin until January of 2015.
Currently, state officials are negotiating possible terms of expansion with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. A decision on expansion most likely depends on the outcome of those negotiations.
Read more about Secretary Mackereth’s comments about a possible expansion time-frame and the issues that still need to be addressed in this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-05-15T06:00:22+00:00May 15th, 2013|Health care reform, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

Will Medicaid Coverage Mean Access?

With many states preparing to expand their Medicaid programs and enroll unprecedented numbers of new people, it is not clear whether Medicaid coverage will lead to access to care.
That concern arises in the wake of a survey that found that only 43 percent of physicians accept Medicaid patients. Other providers, moreover, may not be up to filling the gap: the same survey found that only 20 percent of physician assistants and nurse practitioners serve Medicaid patients.
Thus, while more people than ever will have health insurance once the Medicaid expansion component of the Affordable Care Act takes effect, it is not clear whether those who find themselves newly insured will have reasonable access to medical services.
While the Affordable Care Act attempts to anticipate this challenge by raising the traditionally low fees that Medicare pays primary care physicians to the same level as those paid by Medicare for the next two years, it is not clear whether this new policy is working and if will have a lasting impact after the two-year experiment ends.
This could become a major challenge for Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals if the state eventually chooses to expand its Medicaid program. To date, the state has chosen not to expand the program but has been discussing the possibility of doing so with federal officials. The Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania (SNAP) supports Medicaid expansion in the state.
Read more about the survey and its implications in this Healthcare Finance News report .

PA Safety Net Admin2013-05-08T06:00:00+00:00May 8th, 2013|Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania|Comments Off

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