Home Health & Hospice Week

A recently proposed Medicare rule aims to remove states’ ability to “make payments to third parties on behalf of an individual provider for benefits such as health insurance, skills training, and other benefits customary for employees,” it says. “We are concerned that these provisions are overbroad, and insufficiently linked to the exceptions expressly permitted by the statute,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says in the rule published in the July 12 Federal Register.

If finalized as proposed, the regulation will stop states from “reassigning homecare workers’ dues to unions,” the rule says. “We estimate that unions may currently collect as much as $71 million from such assignments,” according to the rule.

“Union dues skimming diverts Medicaid funds from the very people that the program is supposed to help,” U.S. Rep. Ron Johnson (RWisconsin) told Fox News. “I applaud the Trump Administration for taking the first steps to rein in this abuse.”

The SEIU calls the rule “part of the Administration’s broad, coordinated attack against working people.”

CMS will take comments on the proposal until Aug. 13. Commenting instructions are in the rule at www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2018-07-12/pdf/2018-14786.pdf.