While CMS has been relatively quiet as of late from a public-facing perspective as it waits for new political leadership to arrive (including newly announced CMS Administrator, Chiquita Brooks-LaSure), a recent review by your Editors at www.MedicandandtheLaw.com of CMS’ website indicates a fast-paced effort to roll back a number of Trump-era Medicaid policies, particularly around waiver flexibilities. As I recently mentioned,… More
Tag Archives: Medicaid Objectives
CMS Approves Tennessee “Block Grant” Waiver: A Summary and Analysis from your Editors
For our discussion of the new “closed formulary” flexibility approved in Tennessee, you can read our follow-up post here.
Introduction
On Friday January 8th, in the final days of the Trump Administration, CMS announced approval of a first-in-the-nation waiver that would permit Tennessee to transition from Medicaid’s longstanding, open-ended financing model to a modified “block grant” model – a financing system under which the Federal government has agreed to commit a discrete amount of dollars to the state,… More
CMS Issues New Guidelines on 1115 Waivers; Signals New Medicaid Objectives
On November 6, 2017 the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued an information bulletin on changes and improvements to the existing Section 1115 waiver process.[1] Under Section 1115(a) of the Social Security Act, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is permitted to waive compliance with any of the requirements of section 1902 of the Act (which generally sets forth the requirements for state Medicaid programs in order to receive Federal financial assistance) in order to pilot or test projects which,… More