Recent Articles

Federal regulators Friday approved Ohio’s request to require thousands of Medicaid recipients to work, attend classes or train for a job to qualify for benefits. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services notified state officials that they could impose work requirements on able-bodied adults up to age 50 enrolled in the tax-funded health insurance…

Legal challenges aren’t slowing down the Trump administration’s push to reframe Medicaid as something closer to a welfare program. Driving the news: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Friday approved Ohio’s proposal to add work requirements to its Medicaid program. Just a day earlier, Justice Department lawyers were back before the same federal…

Tennessee Republicans want permission to revamp Medicaid in exchange for a fixed amount from the federal government. Utah is testing whether it can get approval for a partial Medicaid expansion with capped payments from the federal government. And Kentucky lawmakers have weighed drug-testing recipients with criminal or substance-abuse histories, among other steps.

The pain radiated from the top of Annette Monachelli’s head, and it got worse when she changed positions. It didn’t feel like her usual migraine. The 47-year-old Vermont attorney turned innkeeper visited her local doctor at the Stowe Family Practice twice about the problem in late November 2012, but got little relief. Two months later,…

Eliminating profit from an entire sector of the national economy would be unprecedented. But the example of New York, on a smaller scale, shows why it is a recipe for dysfunction. The Empire State’s hospital industry has been 100% nonprofit or government-owned for more than a decade. It’s a byproduct of longstanding, unusually restrictive ownership laws that squeeze for-profit general hospitals. The last one in the state closed its doors in 2008.

“Medicare for All” may sound good to some Americans until they take a closer look at how it would actually work. Take something pretty basic: how it would affect the number of medical professionals we have in this country. “Medicare for All” would drive out many doctors and nurses and compromise the accessibility and quality…

The CMS rolled out new tools on Thursday to help states get approval to make changes to Medicaid such as implementing work requirements. Administrator Seema Verma defended the administration’s push to get more states to pursue 1115 demonstration waivers even as the agency faces criticism over coverage losses due to work rules.

First, she douses progressives’ impeachment dreams in cold water, telling the Washington Post that such a divisive and drastic political step should only be taken over egregious criminality that’s “compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan.”  She cagily adds, “he’s just not worth it,” a personal swipe at the president, likely deployed to placate Trump haters who will bristle at her…

HHS Secretary Alex Azar revealed Thursday that his department is in talks with states about instituting block grants in Medicaid without congressional approval. “There may be states that have asked about block granting, per capita, restructurings around especially expansion populations … It’s at their instigation.”

But he warned that how such a system would work — and who would pay for it — are big questions that have yet to be answered. “For me, I think it’s a great opportunity for the industry to be able to expand the population that it’s coordinating care with,” Broussard said Tuesday at the…