Please waive Medicaid rules for North Carolina, Cooper administration asks Trump
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that on March 24 the Trump administration granted some of the waivers North Carolina requested.
North Carolina needs to temporarily change its Medicaid rules to better protect public health during the spread of coronavirus, state officials said Wednesday.
Gov. Roy Cooper’s Department of Health and Human Services announced it has asked the federal government to grant North Carolina numerous waivers on Medicaid rules. A DHHS press release said if the rules get waived, it will help both the state and local health care providers “address the urgent health care needs of beneficiaries during this public health emergency.”
One of the waivers the state wants regards limits on facility access and length of stay. Officials said it would allow for rural hospitals “to have more beds and for patients to stay longer,” as well as creating more options for people to get care at home instead of coming into a hospital or clinic.
That last part would be in line with “social distancing” guidelines from both the state and federal governments, which urge people not to go out into crowds if they can avoid it. Health experts have repeatedly said that people who are particularly at-risk for coronavirus include people over 65, and people of any age with underlying health issues.
North Carolina requested those waivers March 17. A week later, on March 24, the Trump administration granted them for North Carolina and 10 other states.
The requests came on the heels of another request the state made, earlier this month, asking for waivers related to home-based and community-based services.
DHHS said in a March 18 press release that those waivers “include removing certain dollar and stay limits, expanding the type of location where services can be delivered and easing requirements for reviews of personalized care plans and in-person meetings.”
It’s unclear if the Trump administration has acted on that request yet.
It doesn’t appear that any of the various waiver requests might be considered a form of Medicaid expansion, a politically charged issue.
Cooper, a Democrat, has been fighting with the Republican-led General Assembly for all three years he’s been governor over Medicaid expansion. Cooper wants it and the legislative majority does not. Their disagreement over that is one of the main reasons North Carolina doesn’t have a new state budget at the moment.
A spokeswoman for Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, Lauren Horsch, said DHHS does not need any approval from the state legislature to seek these types of waivers. And lawmakers won’t fight the idea, either.
“These are things that will be helpful in responding to the current crisis and we’re not going to second-guess the department,” she said.
Lawmakers are not currently in session but plan to return to Raleigh in April. In the meantime, several newly formed legislative committees will begin meeting remotely in the next few days to discuss how the state might address economic, health-care and other issues related to coronavirus.
This story was originally published March 18, 2020 at 6:33 PM with the headline "Please waive Medicaid rules for North Carolina, Cooper administration asks Trump."
