Dive Brief:
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CMS is making progress toward goals established in its Equity Plan for Improving Quality in Medicare, according to a recent blog post.
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The plan outlined a path to reduce barriers to care among disadvantaged populations, including racial and ethnic minorities, sexual and gender minorities, people with disabilities, and rural populations.
- Progress to date includes the release of an online mapping tool to identify disparities in Medicare and a guide to preventing readmissions among racial and ethnic minority Medicare patients.
Dive Insight:
CMS is laying the groundwork for sustained progress toward equity in Medicare and Medicaid. Steps taken so far have included sustainable action toward understanding disparities and developing solutions to address them, according to Cara V. James, director of the Office of Minority Health at CMS.
“As we continue implementing the CMS Equity Plan for Medicare, we will focus on building on our accomplishments, strengthening our partnerships, and monitoring and evaluating our progress,” James wrote. She did not mention how Republican control of the White House and Congress will affect efforts at CMS to address disparities in Medicare and Medicaid.
If Republicans achieve full repeal of the ACA, reductions in racial disparities achieved over the past several years could be reversed if no replacement plan is put in place. From 2013 to 2015, uninsured rates fell from 30% to 21% among Hispanic patients, from 19% to 11% among black patients, and from 12% to 7% among white patients, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report published in April.
Other components to the ACA reduce disparities elsewhere. For instance, earlier this year, HHS published a final rule that prevents women from being charged more than men for coverage. Payers had previously charged women as much as 81% more than men for coverage, as a 2012 report from the National Women’s Law Center noted.
Concrete details to a Republican alternative to the ACA have not been revealed.