How Will Immigration Reform Intersect With Medicare?
In this pair of stories, news outlets examine whether immigration reform will stress the Medicare program as well as what hospitals are doing to address the health law's Medicare Wage Index.
The Medicare Newsgroup: Jury Is Out On The Impact Immigration Reform Will Have On Medicare
As Congress grapples with immigration reform, questions are arising about the impact new Americans and legal residents could have on U.S. social programs, among them the health care system. For Medicare, which annually garners a large share of the U.S. budget, the jury is out on whether immigration expansion will stress the program (Solana, 3/27).
Modern Healthcare: Support Seen For Ditching ACA Shift On Medicare Wage Index
Hospitals pushing to reverse a payment provision of the healthcare reform law scored two victories recently, but the war appears far from over. The Coalition of America's Hospitals, a group of 20 state hospital associations, successfully pushed for an amendment to the Senate budget bill reversing a change to the hospital wage index by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Federal law previously required that wage-index adjustments to Medicare payments produce no new net costs to the program within each state (Daly, 3/27).