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
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
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
On April 11, 2019, the Massachusetts House Committee on Ways and Means released its FY 2020 budget (H.3800). The legislation includes provisions authorizing MassHealth (the Massachusetts Medicaid program) to negotiate supplemental rebates directly with drug manufacturers, and provides for further proceedings before the Health Policy Commission for manufacturers refusing to negotiate supplemental rebates at levels satisfactory to the Commonwealth. These provisions represent amendments to a MassHealth drug pricing proposal included in Governor Baker’s FY 2020 filing in January.… More