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Speakers at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Tuesday night were all for the long-term innovations at the heart of Governor Raimondo's Reinventing Medicaid initiative, but some said they were concerned that its immediate cuts would cause significant harm to the hospitals and nursing homes that care for Rhode Island's poor. (Salit and Gregg, 5/19)

The proposed House budget would give Health and Human Services Secretary Aldona Wos sweeping authority to run North Carolina's Medicaid program, allowing her to push forward with changes to the program's details and overall structure with relatively little intervention from the General Assembly. "This is audacious," Rep. Verla Insko, D-Orange, said of the provision during the House Appropriations Committee's vetting of the budget Tuesday morning. (BInker, 5/19)

Responding to a critical federal audit, Missouri Medicaid officials say the state will soon begin collecting required prescription drug rebates and shouldn’t face financial penalties for failing to collect those rebates years ago. In a letter dated May 13 and obtained by the Post-Dispatch late Monday, Missouri Department of Social Services Director Brian Kinkade told federal officials the state would begin to collect the rebates on Medicaid drug claims made after July 1. (Shapiro, 5/19)