ICE officials will be given access to the personal data of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and ethnicities, to track down immigrants who may not be living legally in the United States. The information will give ICE officials the ability to find 'the location of aliens' across the country, says the agreement signed Monday between CMS and the Department of Homeland Security. The agreement has not been announced publicly.
Health insurance premiums are going way up next year for people who buy their insurance on Healthcare.gov or the state-based marketplaces, according to an analysis out Friday. The average person who buys ACA insurance will be paying 75% more for their premium, according to the analysis from KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group.
CVS Health has secured a major healthcare deal, winning a multi-year pharmacy benefits contract with CalPERS, outbidding rival UnitedHealth. The deal marks a significant win for CVS's Caremark unit and could shift competitive dynamics in the pharmacy benefits management market.
The Trump administration is opening the floodgates for more surgeries to be done in outpatient facilities like ambulatory surgery centers, proposing a Medicare policy that could accelerate the shift away from hospital-based care. The administration is aiming to scrap Medicare’s list of 1,700 procedures that the program will only pay for in inpatient settings. Medicare officials unveiled their decision to eliminate the so-called inpatient only list in a proposed rule on Tuesday, reprising an effort from the first Trump administration.
The Trump administration plans to claw back $7.8 billion in Medicare payments to hospitals a decade sooner than originally proposed, potentially sparking another legal challenge from the hospital industry. CMS also intends to send surveys to hospitals asking what their drug costs are, which could set the stage for the Trump administration to attempt to cut hospital drug payments again.
Members of Congress from both parties raised concerns about the potential impact on rural hospitals in the OBBBA. In response, and just prior to passage, the Senate added $50 billion in funding for a new 'rural health transformation program.' This brief describes the rural health fund, explains what the law says about the allocation of funds, and highlights outstanding questions about how the funds will be distributed across and within states to pay rural hospitals and for other purposes.