Tragicomically, CMS asserts “this final rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities[.]”
Impossible expectations are undermining nursing home care
By
Brendan Williams
Feb 05, 2024
Maine has the nation’s oldest population, and yet almost 40% of its nursing homes have closed within the past few decades. As the Bangor Daily News has reported, that’s forced residents of some...
Medicare Advantage: A not-so-advantageous deal for beneficiaries and providers
By
Brendan Williams
Nov 29, 2023
Open enrollment is well underway for Medicare, as television viewers inundated with cheesy insurance company ads can tell. Those ads must work. For the first time 2024 will see most Medicare...
Lawsuit threat for government-run facilities sails again
By
Brendan Williams
Jun 15, 2023
In 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, denied Medicaid providers the right to sue over the adequacy of Medicaid payment rates. It was a 5-4 decision...
Competing in a marketplace of desperation
By
Brendan Williams
Apr 24, 2023
Every day brings with it news that makes it clear why the nursing home sector cannot weather a new federal government staffing mandate, whether it’s a horrendous figure out of Kansas – where...
CMS should be careful in what it asks for
By
Brendan Williams
Dec 23, 2022
Those in the nursing home sector are worried a potential staffing mandate imposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services could be the ruination of a reeling sector. However, there is an argument...
CMS should bring its oversight hammer down . . . on states
By
Brendan Williams
Oct 17, 2022
CMS has an absolute hammer when it comes to accepting, or rejecting, state Medicaid rates that it finds fail to substantially comply with federal law,
Biden’s plan may be coup de grâce for staggering sector
By
Brendan Williams
Mar 02, 2022
President Biden’s plan targets what he feels is the top healthcare sector threat to consumers.
Must we let COVID waltz in the front door?
By
Brendan Williams
Jan 14, 2022
My son is a freshman at a public university in the state of Washington that made the abrupt decision, late afternoon on the last day one could withdraw and receive a tuition refund, to go to online instruction...
Time for government – not nursing homes – to shoulder collective COVID-19 blame
By
Brendan Williams
Jun 07, 2021
In his 1964 State of the Union Address, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared that “[e]very American community will benefit from the construction or modernization of schools and libraries and hospitals...