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Health Policy Newsstand (Subscription required)
The HHS Office of Inspector General said that introducing a medical loss ratio for Medicaid managed care plans in South Carolina during 2014 would not have produced any savings, and Medicaid Health Plans of America said the success of South Carolina's plans proves that having Medicaid plans meet a minimum medical loss ratio as stated in CMS' final Medicaid managed care rule is arbitrary and unnecessary.
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Inside Health Policy (Subscription required)
Medicaid managed care plans profited from Medicaid expansion, but repealing those expansions might not hurt plans that are well positioned to take on the sickest and poorest beneficiaries, analysts say, as states consider moving beneficiaries who historically have been covered by fee-for-service Medicaid into capitated managed care plans to prepared for the potential of shrinking federal contributions that would likely result if Congress sets up block grants or per-enrollee funding caps.
Jeff Myers, president of Medicaid Health Plans of America, said he expects all of these beneficiaries to move into managed care in short order. "The last couple of years has been driven not just by increase of population because expansion, but because states are moving more of the population into managed care," Myers said.
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The Hill
President-elect Donald Trump is calling on congressional Republicans to replace Obamacare "very shortly" after they vote to repeal the law. The comments to The New York Times will put pressure on House Republicans to curtail their plans to leave Obamacare in place for a transition period as long as four years, as some have advocated. But they also pressure the GOP to act on Obamacare's repeal quickly, which some members have resisted. Trump maintained that Obamacare must be repealed, but replaced "very quickly," according to The Times.
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The New York Times
The speed of Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act has stunned health industry lobbyists, leaving representatives of insurance companies, hospitals, doctors and pharmaceutical makers in disarray and struggling for a response to a legislative quick strike that would upend much of the American healthcare system. The Senate is expected to take the first step by Thursday morning, approving parliamentary language in a budget resolution that would fast-track a repeal bill that could not be filibustered in the Senate. House and Senate committees would have until Jan. 27 to report out repeal legislation. Health insurance and healthcare for millions of Americans are at risk.
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The Hill
Repealing Obamacare would increase the budget deficit by $350 billion over 10 years, according to a new study. The analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) finds that repealing the law's spending on providing coverage would save $1.55 trillion, but that would be canceled out by repealing $800 billion in tax increases and $1.1 trillion in Medicare and other cuts.
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Modern Healthcare
An effort by Republican governors in Medicaid expansion states to show the expansion is worth keeping is unlikely to influence congressional Republicans in their drive to repeal the Affordable Care Act and its expansion of coverage to low-income adults, Republican experts say. Instead, congressional Republicans are expected to push ahead to repeal the Medicaid expansion and convert Medicaid from an entitlement to a capped program of federal contributions to the states, said Jon Gilmore, a Republican strategist in Arkansas.
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The News & Observer
The Obama administration pledged Monday to act quickly on North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper's plan to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans want to repeal. Outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell suggested Monday that North Carolina could see a quick answer on its request to expand Medicaid. She demurred on the dispute between Cooper and the Republican-controlled state Legislature over Medicaid, but said, "We will process the governor's proposal as expeditiously as possible when we get it."
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Detroit Free Press
Even though the state of Michigan's bills for the expansion of Medicaid to more than 640,000 low-income Michiganders is growing from $152 million this year to $399 million in 2021, the economic benefit of providing the health care will more than make up for the cost to the state, according to a study released Wednesday by the University of Michigan.
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PBS NewsHour
The Affordable Care Act has brought insurance coverage to millions of low-income Americans. But with President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress vowing to repeal the law, its future is uncertain. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Chris Bury traveled to Kentucky, a state with one of the biggest drops in uninsured residents since the law went into effect.
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Arkansas Online
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson says he has asked members of President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration to allow states to set stricter eligibility standards for their expanded Medicaid programs without giving up federal funds provided under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Hutchinson, who met with members of Trump's transition team in Washington last month, said Wednesday that he wants Arkansas and other states to be able to limit Medicaid enrollment to adults with incomes up to the poverty level, instead of 138 percent of that level, without jeopardizing the funding it receives under the Affordable Care Act.
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The Times-Picayune
Advocates who fought for years to expand Medicaid eligibility in Louisiana are now gearing up for a new fight against a conservative U.S. Congress that has set its sights on repealing the Affordable Care Act. They're being joined this week by Gov. John Bel Edwards, who has sent a letter to members of Congress urging them to keep Medicaid expansion in place, and Louisiana's health secretary, Dr. Rebekah Gee. In an interview on Jan. 5, Gee said Louisiana's progress made under Medicaid expansion — a key component of the Affordable Care Act — should give policy leaders pause in overhauling national healthcare policy.
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A majority of Georgians support expanding Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of poor, uninsured residents, a new poll by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows. Seventy-five percent of people surveyed — including 57 percent of Republicans — said they support growing the health program for the poor, according to poll data.
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The New York Times
Medicaid, which provides healthcare to low-income people, is administered state by state. Extracting, cleaning and curating the information from so many disparate and dated computer systems was an extraordinary achievement, health and technology specialists say. This new collection of data could inform the coming debate on Medicaid spending.
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The Wall Street Journal
A federal judge ordered Pennsylvania's corrections department to provide costly new antiviral drugs to an inmate infected with hepatitis C, and rebuked the state for restricting inmates' access to the drugs. Hepatitis C is an epidemic in prisons, but state corrections departments have treated relatively few prisoners because the drugs are expensive, costing about $54,000 to $94,500 per patient.
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