Few states plan to extend Medicaid pay raise for primary care docs

Also in the news, the Government Accountability Office examines Medicaid's supplemental payments to hospitals and health care providers.

Kaiser Health News: Capsules: 6 States, D.C. Extending Medicaid Pay Raise Next Year To Primary Care Doctors
Just six states and the District of Columbia will use their own money in 2015 to sustain the federal Medicaid pay raise to primary care doctors, which was a key provision of the Affordable Care Act intended to make sure millions of low-income people enrolling in the expanding insurance program have access to a physician (Galewitz, 7/31). 

CQ Healthbeat: Extra Medicaid Payments Rise by $20 Billion Amid Oversight Questions
Extra payments made through the Medicaid program to hospitals and health care providers totaled at least $43 billion in fiscal 2011, up from an estimated $23 billion in fiscal 2006, according to a report from the investigative arm of Congress. The supplemental payments often are intended to address a gap between what Medicare pays for a service and the reimbursement from Medicaid, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released Tuesday. The GAO noted that it has previously raised questions about oversight of the supplemental payments. In 2012, for example, GAO reported that 39 states had made supplemental payments to 505 hospitals that, when combined with their regular Medicaid payments, topped these hospitals' total costs of serving Medicaid patients by $2.7 billion (Young, 7/30).