Source: HealthcareDive.com
Date: 3/15/19
By: Les Masterson
- Medicaid work requirements could hurt hospital finances, though how a state’s payer mix and how it designs the regulation will influence the subsequent financial impact for providers, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund.
- Work requirements lead to fewer covered Medicaid beneficiaries. That results in hospitals with reduced revenues, more uncompensated care and smaller operating margins. Kentucky, as well as Michigan and Tennessee, which have proposed requirements, could lose more than 20% of Medicaid revenue per hospital. Kentucky and Michigan would also see huge uncompensated care cost increases, according to the report.
- Meanwhile, this week Trump administration officials are arguing in defense of the work requirements in front a skeptical federal judge in Washington, D.C. Judge James Boasberg already halted the requirement in Kentucky after finding it may violate the very purpose of the program, according to his initial ruling in June. The administration “never adequately considered” whether the program would “help the state furnish medical assistance to its citizens, a central objective of Medicaid,” the ruling said. Boasberg will have a final ruling in the case in two weeks, a lawyer present in the courtroom during Thursday’s oral arguments told Healthcare Dive.
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