Bracing for the inevitable end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE), CMS has begun issuing voluminous guidance to states on unwinding Medicaid’s continuous enrollment requirement without precipitating a calamitous drop in coverage. We’ve previously discussed the continuous enrollment requirement here, here and here.
By way of background, section 6008 of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA),… More
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most people have spent considerably more time at home over the past year. For many, this meant long hours of Netflix binging, crossword puzzles, and the occasional zoom happy hour. But for some of the most vulnerable Americans, stay at home orders and social distancing have caused significant interruptions in access to health care services, including preventative doctor visits, medication management and nutritional services.… More
Here at the Medicaid and the Law Blog, we’ve spent the past couple of days going through the American Rescue Plan Act, legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last Friday that is the latest attempt by Congress to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are several provisions of the legislation that would revise and expand the Medicaid program, and we thought it would be of interest to highlight them here. … More
Right before the new year, we told you about some of the Medicaid-related provisions of the COVID relief package that was recently signed into law by President Trump. One provision of that law that we thought merited a separate article was a new requirement that state Medicaid plans cover the routine patient costs of items and services furnished in connection with the participation by a Medicaid beneficiary in a routine clinical trial. … More
Today we want to address a topic that many state Medicaid agencies will no doubt be thinking about in the coming months, as the COVID-caused pandemic continues to threaten state finances and Congress has somewhat tied states’ hands in responding to increased Medicaid expenditures by prohibiting coverage disenrollments. (Although as my colleague Ross Margulies has pointed out here, CMS has recently given states some additional flexibilities in this regard).… More
Here at the Medicaid and the Law Blog, we spent part of our holiday break reading through the most recent COVID-19 relief package that was finally signed into law by President Trump amid a not-insignificant amount of drama. It was quite an undertaking; the new law is over 5,000 double-spaced pages. While much of the legislation is related specifically or more generally to COVID-19 and economic recovery,… More
Back in March, Tom gave you, our readers, an overview of the Administration’s and Congress’ initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the inclusion in the second Congressional package (the Families First Coronavirus Response Act) of a substantial “bump” to each state Medicaid program’s federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP) during the period of the current national emergency to the extent they abide by certain minimum standards.… More
Well, we’ve been waiting for awhile and now it’s been made public: the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on June 9 that it was releasing $25 billion in funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act to high Medicaid providers and to safety net hospitals. President Trump signed the CARES Act into law on March 27; the CARES law and a subsequent law appropriated $175 billion to a Provider Relief Fund to address the needs of healthcare providers that had increased expenses or lost revenues due to COVID-19. … More
“Social distancing,” a euphemism for an infection prevention and containment strategy, will undoubtedly live in the annals of meme history for its incredibly disrupting effects on the world. Fortunately, advancements in technology that allow one to upload the same memes to the internet have also enabled medical providers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by furnishing medical care, also known as “telehealth” or “telemedicine,” to their patients in the comfort (and safety) of their own homes,… More
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began to seriously affect the United States in March, Congress has passed four major pieces of legislation to address the public health crisis. CMS has also jumped into action and has issued a series of waivers designed to ensure that the American health care system can function without bureaucratic obstacles preventing the appropriate delivery of care. Today, we want to highlight some of the major Medicaid provisions of those four pieces of legislation;… More