Medicaid
Waiting on new Medicaid eligibility checks
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has begun to send lists of people it suspects to be ineligible for Medicaid or CHIP to states, HHS announced Tuesday. But some states are still waiting.
The CMS report kicks off an effort by the federal government to flag people whose citizenship or immigration status could not be confirmed, and therefore may be ineligible for coverage.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services told STAT that it “has not received notice from CMS of this initiative,” and didn’t know the number of people who might be impacted.
Massachusetts’ Medicaid program also hadn’t received direct communication on the matter, a spokesperson said.
An HHS spokesperson declined to say how many people were included in the first reports or which states received them. Other state health departments we reached out to did not respond to requests for comment.
The federal government is leaving it to the states to act on the lists, such as by reviewing the immigration status of individuals who are flagged and potentially ending their coverage.
Science
Leading the charge to stop science cuts
A former Trump adviser is at the center of the effort to save billions in federal funding for research nationwide, Jonathan Wosen reports.
Kelvin Droegemeier, a meteorology professor who ran the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during part of President Trump’s first term, has been pushing new proposals to preserve science funding.
Droegemeier sits in a key position: being trusted by both by academia and conservative policymakers. That made him a natural choice to lead an effort among research groups to rethink current GOP proposals that would slash the money offered to universities for research overhead, known as indirect costs.
Read more about the man at the center of a debate that has been front of mind for researchers — and for the industries that rely on their discoveries.
insurERS
Federal employees to lose gender-affirming care coverage
The Trump administration quietly moved late last week to stop federal employees’ health insurance from covering gender-affirming care next year — regardless of age.
The move will impact nearly 10 million federal employees.
In a letter to carriers in its health insurance programs, the Office of Personnel Management said “chemical and surgical modification of an individual's sex traits” would no longer be covered, though the drugs and procedures could be covered for other reasons.
Carriers are instructed to create a “case-by-case” exemptions process for those already receiving treatment. Counseling will continue to be covered, according to the letter.
The move comes in sharp contrast to earlier moves among conservatives to limiting gender-affirming care for minors only.
CONGRESS
A new push on price transparency
Sens. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) are leading a new push to strengthen requirements on price transparency in hospitals, Marshall writes in a new STAT First Opinion article.
The two senators introduced a new bill, the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, which would require machine-readable files for all negotiated and cash prices, require hospitals to post prices for services, and require patients to receive an explanation of benefits as well as an itemized bill.
It’s part of a years-long movement to crack down on billing practices among providers — one the White House joined in earlier this year via executive order.
But the bipartisan push is far from a guarantee of changes in the current law. Even some widely backed health proposals in Congress have been left behind in must-pass packages. Read Marshall’s piece.
