A new update underscores the central role of community health centers in controlling community spread, while ensuring that patients have access to their regular source of health care throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Geiger Gibson Perspectives
GEIGER GIBSON PERSPECTIVES
Our periodic blogs offer quick takes on emerging issues in health law and policy of relevance to community health centers and the communities they serve, addressing how current policy considerations and upcoming regulatory and legislative changes may impact underserved communities.
Medicaid As A Public Health Responder: Washington State’s 1135 Waiver
CMS’ approval of Washington’s waiver request points to a specific model of 1135 waivers the agency deems appropriate in ensuring sufficient health care items and services are available to Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP enrollees in an emergency area.
Medicaid in the 2021 White House Budget Proposal
As usual, the President’s Budget for America’s Future, along with its appendices and the HHS documents, devotes more ink to Medicaid than virtually any other single programmatic topic. Through both regulatory action and legislative proposals, the administration targets Medicaid in a variety of ways, from eliminating the expansion population to overhauling the eligibility determination process, mandating work as a condition of eligibility, and introducing numerous other eligibility and coverage restrictions.
The effect of Indiana’s Medicaid work experiment on community health centers (updated estimates).
With the growth of health centers comes growth in Medicaid patients served and revenue realized. This growth in turn means that a major shift in state Medicaid policy can be expected to have a spillover effect on patient care capacity and staffing among safety net health care providers such as community health centers, as these estimates show.
Health centers rely on Medicaid as a major source of operational funding.
The New Public Charge Rule Targets Immigrant Receipt of Public Benefits.
The long-awaited public charge final rule, titled “Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds” was published by the Department of Homeland Security on August 14.
Medicaid work requirement experiments could prove costly for thousands of patients and staff
The estimated numbers are featured in an analysis by the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative. This analysis presents first-time estimates for Arizona, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, as well as updated estimates for Arkansas, and provides previously reported estimates for Kentucky and New Hampshire.
From its earliest days, the Trump administration has signaled its intent to roll back Medicaid coverage for low income adults. In a March 2017 letter to the nation’s governors, then-Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Seema Verma characterized an Act of Congress -- the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion legislation for low-income working-age adults – “a clear departure from the core, historical mission of the program.”
What could New Hampshire’s Medicaid work experiment mean for community health centers?
More than 2500 fewer patients may visit New Hampshire community health centers annually due to the restrictive Medicaid work and reporting requirements the state launched in January, according to an analysis by researchers at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH). Their analysis, published today on GWHPMMatters, includes their estimate that the requirements may result in nearly 11,000 fewer visits to the state’s community health centers, cut Medicaid revenues by up to $2.8 million, and cause up to 28 full-time staff to be lost.
Brief Calls for Blocking Trump Administration’s Title X Gag Rule
An amicus brief signed by 57 public health scholars supports one of the lawsuits challenging a proposed rule from the Trump Administration that would significantly alter the federal Title X Family Planning program. The brief’s signatories include the American Public Health Association, as well as three George Washington University deans, three chairs of departments in the Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and fourteen faculty members from both schools.