Energy and Commerce Committee Holds Medicaid-Focused Hearing

The House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Health held a hearing on April 30, featuring the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Deputy Administrator Daniel Tsai who is also the head of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) at CMS. Many of the legislative proposals on the docket for discussion have bipartisan support; however, it was the partisan proposals that got a majority of the attention.

Two bills that LeadingAge strongly supports took up a majority of the question time during the hearing-the Protecting America's Seniors Access to Care Act to halt implementation of the minimum staffing mandate and a new bill (H.R. 8114) which would halt implementation of the 80/20 payment adequacy provision of the Medicaid Access rule.

On the staffing rule, Republicans showed strong support for nursing homes by underscoring that a one-size-fits-all approach is going to cause providers to shutter beds, reduce access to care, and is not tenable. Democrats uniformly supported the Administration's position on the rule. Committee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) talked about his bill, H.R. 468, which would allow temporary nursing assistants to work as certified nursing assistants as they await certification as a workforce solution. LeadingAge also supports this bill.

On the home and community-based services (HCBS) side, a number of bipartisan bills were discussed but the focus of most questions related to HCBS were on the Medicaid Access Rule. Many Republican members talked about the 80/20 provision and the potential deleterious impact on providers.

In particular, Representative Troy Balderson (R-OH) used an example of a LeadingAge member who provides services in his district and has already slashed their administrative costs to the barebones and asked how this provider was supposed to continue to provide services given the 80/20 rule. He also noted the connection to programs like Money Follows the Person-it is great to promote HCBS, he said, but if there is no one to provide the care in the community, programs like MFP and other HCBS expansion efforts will not work. Representative Diana Harshbarger (R-TN) and others noted the lack of data to inform the CMS mandate.

An article with more details on the hearing will be available in the coming days. LeadingAge submitted a statement for the hearing record that can be found here.