Hurricane Harvey has left our Houston and Texas communities with significant recovery and restoration needs. As attorneys, we struggle with how we can be most helpful. It is in this spirit, that we have compiled this Special...more
During the summer months, several developments have occurred concerning the Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) policy that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has implemented, to the detriment of a...more
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published a Final Rule intended to stabilize the individual and small group insurance markets on April 18, 2017. Reflecting the urgent need to address the uncertainty...more
Late Monday afternoon, House Republican leaders released a two-bill legislative package to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Collectively called the “American Health Care Act” or “AHCA,” the two bills...more
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued a proposed rule aimed at improving the individual and small group markets that have been plagued with instability as issuers continue exiting the Exchanges....more
Now that the rule is out, work to implement the BBA changes begins in earnest.
CMS commemorated the one-year anniversary of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (BBA) with the traditional gift of paper, offering...more
Republicans’ biggest issue will be what to do with the 20 million Americans who have gained coverage under the ACA.
Congress reconvened this week for the first time since Donald Trump’s stunning victory, and just as his...more
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released a proposed rule addressing the treatment of third-party payments when calculating uncompensated care costs for the Medicaid disproportionate share...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued its proposed Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2018 (Proposed Rule) a couple of months earlier than in the past - one of the administration’s many...more
For those in the hospital industry hoping for additional clarity regarding the operation and billing of provider-based departments (PBDs), the CY 2017 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) Proposed Rule provides some...more
This month, hospitals impacted by Section 603 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (BBA) may finally get a glimpse of what the future holds for the off-campus departments they operated or were developing when the BBA was...more
“A most curious and convoluted argument whose mother was undoubtedly necessity,” wrote Judge Rosemary M. Collyer in describing the argument made by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to uphold the...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued a 1,425-page regulation (Rule) on managed care in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), dubbed the first overhaul of these regulations...more
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued the final 2017 Benefit and Payment Parameters Rule (Final Rule) and concurrently released a final 2017 Letter to Issuers (Letter to Issuers) in the...more
H.R. 1314, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, was signed into law by President Obama on November 2, 2015. The two-year budget framework, which raises the federal debt limit through March 2017, partially rolls back the Budget...more
The U.S. Supreme Court in King v. Burwell, upheld the availability of subsidies to individuals who purchase health insurance on either a state or federal Exchange. While the Court’s 6-3 decision is being hailed politically as...more
Approximately a quarter of all Medicaid expenditures is spent on the more than half of all beneficiaries (approximately 39 million by 2011 figures cited in the 2014 MACPAC Report) currently accessing part or all of their...more
H.R. 2, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), was signed into law by President Obama on April 16, 2015. A broad bipartisan compromise measure, MACRA repeals the much-maligned sustainable growth rate (SGR)...more
Describing her recent Supreme Court experience as “my Super Bowl,” Susan Feigin Harris offers her personal account and analysis of the oral arguments in King v. Burwell. I was ready to go: hat, gloves, boots and parka. A...more
Challenging actions by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), Texas Children’s Hospital and Seattle Children’s Hospital obtained a preliminary injunction that enjoins...more
While we turn to science and laws to guide our response to matters in the healthcare industry, the entrance of the Ebola virus into our lives here in the U.S. has challenged our abilities, both from a medical and legal...more
States increasingly are experimenting with the use of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in their Medicaid programs as a possible avenue to curb the escalating costs of providing care to expanding Medicaid populations....more
Approximately eight million children currently covered by the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) may lose access to their pediatric-specific benefits and provider networks if legislation is not passed to extend...more
In the world of healthcare policy and law, we usually discuss issues impacting providers, but don’t often report about the training and infrastructure behind what allows our healthcare system to treat patients in our...more
While not a new concept, the use of narrow networks has become a lightning rod for the controversy surrounding qualified health plans (QHPs) offered on the insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and...more