Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
U.S. Territories On Path Toward 'Medicaid Cliff' As Congress Drags Its Feet Over Funding
Right now, there are dozens of patients — U.S. citizens — in New Zealand hospitals who are fighting the clock. They have only a few weeks to recover and get home to the tiny island of American Samoa, a U.S. territory in the South Pacific. "We have a cancer patient that is coming back in December," says Sandra King Young, who runs the Medicaid program in American Samoa. "We can only give him six weeks of chemo, radiation and surgery. He has a good chance of survival if he has the full year of treatment, but not six weeks. The patient and family understand, and since they have no money, they have agreed to come back." (Simmons-Duffin, 11/20)
Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration is warning lawmakers against including work requirements in Medicaid expansion, cautioning the rules would cause many people to cycle in and out of the program, raising costs and possibly increasing the number of residents without health insurance. As states across the country have expanded eligibility for Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income families, Republicans have pushed several to adopt work requirements. Many of those states now face legal roadblocks that have kept the rules from going into effect. (Shorman, 11/19)
Though its Medicaid contract is still at stake, Aetna Better Health is making progress, Kansas lawmakers and state regulators said this week. ...State regulators had put Aetna on notice in July that it wasn’t in compliance with its state contract and risked being fired. The state initially rejected Aetna’s proposal to correct issues this summer, but approved an updated plan in September that included concrete deadlines to fix specific issues like delayed payments to hospitals. (Koranda, 11/19)
North Carolina's Medicaid program won't shift to managed-care benefits as scheduled early next year, the largest casualty to date of the monthslong budget stalemate between Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Republican lawmakers. Although the Department of Health and Human Services' Tuesday announcement about the rollout suspension was anticipated, the indefinite delay still represents a significant failure for both the legislative and executive branches. (11/19)
