Site-Neutral Payment Proposals Alerts

It is important to engage with your lawmakers while they are home and discuss the impact that the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act and additional policy proposals that are under consideration will have on hospitals’ ability to provide care.

Congressional committees have begun marking up their portions of a reconciliation bill to enact key pieces of President Trump’s agenda.

With your senators and representatives home in their states and districts for the next two weeks, please reach out to your lawmakers and urge them to reject funding cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs as part of reconciliation bill.

Please ask your senators and representatives to prevent Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payment cuts from taking effect; extend enhanced low-volume adjustment and Medicare-dependent hospital programs that expand access to care in rural areas; and extend telehealth and hospital-at-home waivers.

Before the lame-duck session ends and the 118th Congress adjourns, it is essential that federal lawmakers understand the challenges hospitals and health systems face and what is at stake for the patients and communities they represent.

While lawmakers are in their district, it is important for the field to engage with members of Congress to remind them of the importance of preserving access to care by continuing to fund vital programs like telehealth and hospital-at-home waivers, and avoiding harmful policies such as site-neutral payments and Medicaid DSH cuts.

Lawmakers have returned to Washington for three weeks to consider government funding, which expires Oct. 1. Congress must pass a continuing resolution (CR) by Sept. 30 to avoid a government shutdown.

Lawmakers need to hear how congressional support is necessary to ensure hospitals can provide the 24/7 access to care patients and communities depend on.

The House of Representatives as soon as next week could consider the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act (H.R. 5378), a bill that includes site-neutral payment cuts and detrimental provisions focused on hospital price transparency, among other issues.

A series of recent developments in Congress are adding significant urgency to AHA’s fight against site-neutral payment and other policies that would irreparably damage hospitals’ abilities to care for their communities, including a move to use rate setting that would offer commercial insurers a financial windfall at the expense of providers.

Both the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee and House Ways and Means Committee are expected to discuss and mark-up proposed bills with site-neutral payment and other policies expected to significantly impact hospitals if enacted.

Congress returns to Washington this week with a full legislative agenda before its scheduled August recess.

Congress continues to discuss a number of proposals that would enact additional site-neutral payment cuts. The AHA strongly opposes these proposals because they would reduce Medicare payments to hospitals and health systems, creating a significantly negative impact on the field’s financial sustainability and further contributing to Medicare’s chronic failure to cover the cost of caring for its beneficiaries.

Several House and Senate committees will hold hearings this week on a variety of issues that affect hospitals and health systems.

Several House subcommittees April 26 will hold hearings on a variety of issues that affect hospitals and health systems, including transparency, site-neutral payment policies, tax-exempt status, workforce shortages and the Provider Relief Fund.

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health is expected to hold a follow-up hearing on transparency and competition in health care. The AHA appreciates your outreach in advance of the March 28 hearing; however, based on the comments representatives made during the recent hearing, it is clear there remains a critical need to continue the ongoing education of lawmakers, especially those serving on this important subcommittee.

As Congress enters the home stretch for 2019, they are considering a number of key hospital and health system issues as part of year-end legislation.

Members of Congress are in their home districts and states for the next two weeks, and it is an excellent opportunity to talk with your lawmakers about important issues they will consider when they return to Washington, D.C.

Reps. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), chair of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) are asking their House colleagues to sign on to a letter urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to reconsider proposals to cut payments for evaluation and management services and expand certain site-neutral payment policies to grandfathered off-campus hospital provider-based departments (PBDs).