On Thursday, January 30, the Trump Administration followed up on last week’s reports with their Medicaid Healthy Adult Opportunity proposal. The announcement came through CMS Administrator Seem Verma with careful avoidance of using the term block grant. The Administration is attempting to use their waiver authority to allow a more limited Medicaid block grant. In
The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) produced a report to Congress on the oversight of Institutions of Mental Diseases (IMDs). “MACPAC serves as a non-partisan legislative branch agency and independent source of information for Medicaid and CHIP and are responsible for reporting to Congress.” Federal definition for IMD are a “hospital, nursing
Last week, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a key Obama Administration advisor on health care reform, described how several states, using the ACA, have achieved near-universal coverage. At the same time, the Trump Administration moved forward on a proposal that would turn the Medicaid program into a partial state block grant. Emanuel writing in Politico said that
On Tuesday, January 28, two subcommittees of the House Committee on Education and Labor, the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and the Subcommittee on Pensions and Workforce Protections conducted a hearing entitled Expecting More: Addressing America’s Maternal and Infant Health Crisis. Testimony was given by three witnesses: Stacey Stewart, CEO of March of Dimes, Nikia
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Prevention found that in 2017 there were 1,400 deaths sue to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in the United States. SIDS is the leading cause of postneonatal mortality, with an overall rate of 0.39/1000 births. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported study, Concurrent prenatal drinking and smoking increases
The Commonwealth Fund published a new report that analyzes health care data in the United States and offers a cross-national comparison. The report looks at how the United States compares to wealthy countries, including Canada, Norway, and the United Kingdom, and found that the U.S. holds the highest suicide rates and lowest life expectancy, despite
The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a new brief, Challenges in Providing Substance Use Disorder Treatment to Child Welfare Clients in Rural Communities, that focuses on the barriers rural communities face in providing substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, particularly to
In the past week, several publications have reported that the Administration is readying a proposal to allow states to take a block grant of Medicaid funding. Publications, including the Wall Street Journal and Politico, are describing efforts by CMS Administrator Seema Verma to develop the policy. The proposal would be issued through a letter to
A new study, Association of Medicaid Expansion With Opioid Overdose Mortality in the United States, finds that jurisdictions that expanded access to Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) had a six percent reduction in opioid deaths. The study published in JAMA Network Open, more specifically counties in expansion states, had an 11 percent lower
On Wednesday, December 18, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans struck down part of the Affordable Care Act provision, ruling that the requirement that people have health insurance was unconstitutional on a 2-1 decision and sent the case back to the lower court in Texas for further analysis. Several state attorneys