Medicare To Bolster Mental Health Services With New Types Of Providers

Axios: Medicare Is About To Add Hundreds Of Thousands More Mental Health Providers
The largest expansion of Medicare's mental health services in a generation can provide a critical lifeline to America's seniors — if enough providers sign up. Starting Jan. 1, some 400,000 marriage and family therapists and mental health counselors for the first time can accept Medicare payment, following years of advocacy and amid a mental health crisis that has weighed heavily on seniors. (Goldman, 12/20)

Bloomberg: Hospital Prices: Medicare Warns Companies On Price Transparency 
Some of the largest US hospital chains and most prestigious academic medical centers have violated federal rules by not posting the prices they charge for care, according to records obtained by Bloomberg News. For-profit HCA Healthcare Inc., the nation’s largest hospital system, and big nonprofit operators including Ascension and Trinity Health have been cited for failing to make prices fully available to the public, enforcement letters Bloomberg obtained through a public records request show. So have marquee facilities such as New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, Emory University Hospital and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. (Tozzi and Meghjani, 12/20)

Modern Healthcare: HHS Seeks To Dismiss Medicare Home Health Payment Lawsuit
The Biden administration has asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit by the National Association for Home Care and Hospice challenging how the agency sets payments to providers. The motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Health and Human Services Department claims the lawsuit should be dismissed “for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.” (Eastabrook, 12/19)

Modern Healthcare: How Home Health Services, Home Care Services Differ
Efforts to move more care into the home got a boost last week when the Biden administration announced $37 billion in funding to support home- and community-based services through the American Rescue Plan Act. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is encouraging states to use the money to create registries for consumers of direct care workers who can provide home-based care to Medicaid beneficiaries, as well as those who do not receive Medicaid benefits. (Eastabrook, 12/19)

On 'Medicare for All' —

The New York Times: Dean Phillips, An Upstart Challenger To Biden, Embraces ‘Medicare For All’
As he mounts a long-shot primary challenge to President Biden, Representative Dean Phillips says he has had an epiphany about American health care policy. Gone is his yearslong skepticism about adopting a national single-payer health care system. Now Mr. Phillips, a moderate Democrat from Minnesota, is embracing the “Medicare for all” proposal championed in two presidential campaigns by Senator Bernie Sanders — whose former top aide is now advising Mr. Phillips’s campaign. (Epstein and Stolberg, 12/20)

In updates from Capitol Hill —

CNN: Senators Raise Alarm About Nation’s Largest Prison Health Care Provider
The nation’s largest prison health care provider has come under fire from a group of Democratic senators who say they are alarmed the government contractor’s chronic understaffing and cost-cutting measures may have put inmates’ lives in danger. (Ellis and Hicken, 12/19)

KFF Health News: ‘I Am Just Waiting To Die’: Social Security Clawbacks Drive Some Into Homelessness 
More than a year after the federal government first cut off her disability benefits, Denise Woods drives nightly to strip malls, truck stops, and parking lots around Savannah, Georgia, looking for a safe place to sleep in her Chevy. Woods, 51, said she had rented a three-bedroom house she shared with her adult son and grandson until March 2022, when the government terminated her disability payments without notice. (Clasen-Kelly, 12/20)