The Medicaid Payment Provision Under Obamacare

The Medicaid Payment Provision Under Obamacare.
Sweetening Medicaid payments to primary-care providers does alter appointments for first-time patients more substantially available, a new muse about suggests. The finding offers what the researchers say is the first evidence that one of the aims of Obamacare is working - that increasing Medicaid reimbursements for pure care to more generous Medicare levels increases constant access to health care. Medicaid is the government's health insurance program for the poor ejaculation. The results were published online Jan 21, 2015 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Medicaid notoriously pays providers less than what Medicare and personal insurers even a score for the same services. Policymakers were anguished that the supply of primary-care doctors willing to see Medicaid enrollees after the growth of health coverage under the Affordable Care Act would not meet patient demand. To sermon their concern, the law directed states to raise Medicaid payments for primary-care services in 2013 and 2014 hgh booster reviews. The increases mixed by state, since some were already paying rates closer to Medicare rates and others were paying less than half of Medicare rates, the retreat authors noted.

States received an estimated $12 billion in additional federal funding over the two-year patch to ratchet up Medicaid payments to available primary-care providers, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians. However, the additional federal funding expired at the end of 2014 and, so far, only 15 states arrangement to continue the reimbursement increases, the think over noted. To assess the effectiveness of the Medicaid payment provision under Obamacare, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Trained callers posing as patients contacted primary-care offices in 10 states during two chance periods: before and after the reimbursement increases kicked in. Callers indicated having coverage either through Medicaid or retired indemnification and requested new-patient appointments. After the avail hike, Medicaid assignation availability rose significantly, the study found. In the states with the largest increases in Medicaid reimbursement, gains in nomination availability were particularly large, the researchers noted.