Government Healthcare Policy, Business and Technology

Renewed Tennessee Medicaid waiver will limit uncompensated-care funds

Modern Healthcare: The Obama administration and Tennessee officials have broken their impasse over the future of federal funding that subsidizes uncompensated care provided by the state's hospitals.The funding pool is part of a larger waiver that allows the state to continue its Medicaid managed-care model, known as TennCare. Disagreements about the structure and amount of uncompensated-care funding has held up the renewal of the entire waiver for six months.TennCare was authorized in 2002 under a Section 1115 waiver that expired June 30 but has been extended several times. The CMS has now agreed to extend the waiver through June 30, 2021. Under the new agreement, the CMS will continue the uncompensated-care payments through June 30, 2017, at current levels, which have averaged around $500 million a year.

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