Three weeks after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned nearly 50 years of precedent regarding federal protections for abortion care, the rapidly shifting care landscape has thrown the administration, providers, federal and state legislators, health care advocates and patients into chaos as they attempt to navigate the legality of care. The disarray, which Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer predicted in their dissent, has fallen most heavily on patients, especially...

The public health emergency unwinding should be considered a chance to re-evaluate the future of Medicaid eligibility and passing reforms that extend continuous coverage and improve the ex parte renewal system, CMS Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services Director Daniel Tsai said. Tsai told Georgetown Center for Children and Families virtual conference attendees Tuesday (July 12) that beneficiary advocates’ concerns about Medicaid – some estimate as many as 16 million people could lose coverage – aren’t unique to the PHE...

CMS asks stakeholders what information could help gauge the impact of provider mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, and whether merger and acquisition information on providers other than nursing homes and hospitals would be helpful, as part of its wide-ranging proposed 2023 hospital outpatient pay rule, under which hospitals are expected to see a 2.7% increase compared to this year. However, that increase doesn’t take into account CMS’ eventual handling of the Supreme Court’s ruling that the agency reverse previous cuts to...