The Affordable Care Act provided a big increase in Medicaid payments for primary care in 2013 and 2014. But the increase expired in 2014— just weeks after the Obama administration told the Supreme Court that doctors and other providers had no legal right to challenge the adequacy of payments they received from Medicaid.
For the last two years, the federal government has required state Medicaid agencies to pay at least as much as Medicare pays for primary care services. Family doctors, internists and pediatricians have thus received Medicare-level payments for primary care, with the federal government making up the difference in costs.
In his budget request in March, President Obama proposed a one-year extension of the higher Medicaid payments. Several Democratic members of Congress backed the idea, but the proposals languished, and such legislation would appear to face long odds in the new Congress, with Republicans controlling both houses.
Concern is that doctors will restrict the number of medicaid patients they will service because the payments will be much smaller. Read more about thiis in the New York Times at http://nyti.ms/1xqqRJc
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