State Withholding Some Provider Medicaid Payments
With the state budget still lacking a plan to raise revenue to underwrite expenses, the Wolf administration is beginning to withhold payments to the state’s creditors.
Including those who provide services to the more than 2.8 million Pennsylvanians enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program.
Last week the Wolf administration announced that it withhold $1.2 billion in Medicaid provider payments.
Unless the problem is resolved, more state payments could be withheld in the coming weeks.
Learn more about what the Wolf administration is doing and how it might affect Medicaid and Medicaid providers in this Philadelphia Inquirer article.
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.
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.
Included in this edition are articles about:
Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program is moving toward greater use of value-based purchasing in its Medicaid behavioral health programs.
The process of determining Medicaid eligibility in Pennsylvania either begins or works its way through the state’s county assistance offices.
Patient advocates maintain that all Medicaid beneficiaries with Hepatitis C should have access to the drugs and Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program appears to be on a path toward making that possible.
That includes 680,000 Pennsylvanians who enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program after the reform law allowed for that program’s expansion, more than 400,000 people who signed up for insurance on the federal health insurance exchange, the state’s taxpayers who might be left with the bill for some or all of these costs if the reform law’s financial support were to disappear in the near future, and others.