Montana Hospitals Preserve Medicaid Expansion, Fend Off Regulations
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Get our weekly newsletter, The Week in Brief, featuring a roundup of our original coverage, Fridays at 2 p.m. ET.
Montana’s powerful hospital lobby was instrumental in renewing the state’s Medicaid expansion program and has also fended off most legislation to increase state oversight of their business.
A bill designed to force PBMs to pay higher fees to independent drugstores sailed through the state House, but lobbyists are marshaling their forces to kill the measure in the Senate.
Patients and providers say health insurers’ preapproval requirements lead to delays and denials of needed medical treatments. Insurers argue that prior authorization keeps costs down.
The moves under consideration include relocating a residential facility for people with developmental disabilities, renovating the state’s psychiatric hospital, and opening a new unit of the hospital in Helena.
Legislative leaders say the decision whether to renew Montana’s Medicaid expansion program this year will loom over behavioral health spending and hospital regulation, among other topics.
The new Montana law contains a couple of significant differences from the measure voters rebuffed last fall.
Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s veto disappointed and bewildered those seeking to address low-income residents’ long wait for assisted living or in-home care.
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