House panel hears testimony on site-neutral payments, potential for Medicaid cuts to providers

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services would receive a funding cut of more than $500 million under a spending bill released Wednesday by a House committee.

The House Appropriations Committee’s Fiscal Year 2017 Labor, Health and Human Services Funding Bill would give CMS $3 billion for program management and operations, $576 million less than the enacted level for FY 2016. The proposed funding amount is also $1 billion below what President Barack Obama requested in his 2017 budget plan.

The funding bill does not include any additional funding to implement programs under the Affordable Care Act, and prohibits funding for the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight and Navigators programs.

The National Institutes of Health would receive a total of $33.3 billion in funding under the bill, $2.25 billion more than what President Obama requested. More than $1.2 billion of that would go toward an Alzheimer’s disease research initiative, boosting research funding for the disease by $350 million.

“This bill achieves its goal of reducing discretionary spending by more than half a billion dollars, all the while prioritizing where funding is needed the most,” said Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) in a news release.

The Senate Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittee approved a spending bill with funds for Alzheimer’s research and remedies for the massive backlog of Medicare claims appeals last month.