The so-called designated share hospital payments are jointly financed between federal and state governments and are designed to offset uncompensated care costs and shore up the country’s safety-net hospitals.
Such recommended changes to law include a countercyclical financing model to ensure that total government funding remains largely unaffected by economic cycles. DSH payments are currently capped at the state level by the federal government.
The report also calls for lower variation in funding for each state with greater attention paid to the proportion of low-income patients in any given state.
The full “Report to Congress on Medicaid and CHIP” is available here.
