Policy & Regulation

The COVID-19 pandemic and the slowdown in economic activity have impacted the well-being of many U.S. families. Unemployment peaked at 14.7 percent in April, and remained above 8 percent in August. The CARES Act and the Family First Coronavirus Response Act used several short-term policy strategies to address this challenge.

This report responds to a requirement in Executive Order 13877, "Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First." It describes the phenomenon of a "surprise billing," particularly in the commercial insurance market, the underlying federal and state regulatory frameworks, and recent state actions to address the problem.

The purpose of this study is to describe and document changes states have made to their Medicaid or other publicly-funded consumer directed home care programs for seniors and individuals with disabilities to comply with the 2013 update to Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations.

The objective of this environmental scan is to summarize the peer-reviewed and grey literature on oversight of residential care for mental health and substance use care in the United States, excluding inpatient hospital care.

States have begun to collect and post information on bed availability (i.e., create bed registries or bed tracking systems) as a tool for providers, patients, and caregivers to identify open beds more efficiently.

There are multiple pathways to becoming dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. The purpose of this study is to identify the frequency with which these pathways are followed and the beneficiary characteristics and patterns of service use by pathway.

This paper seeks to document the frequency of Medicaid coverage loss among full-benefit dual eligible beneficiaries and identify potential causes for coverage loss. For dual eligible beneficiaries, the loss of full-benefit Medicaid coverage is of concern because most of them do not have an alternative source of health insurance for the services covered by full-benefit Medicaid.

The 2018 HHS Data Strategy focuses on improving the Department’s capacity to develop statistical evidence to support policymaking and program evaluation over the next six to eight years.

Medicare beneficiaries in inpatient psychiatric facilities (IPFs) have complex conditions that require sustained engagement with physical and mental health care providers. People who receive care from IPFs are at risk for a range of negative health outcomes, but surprisingly little is known about their patterns of care.

Among employed adults, major depression is a leading cause of work absences (absenteeism) and impaired work performance (presenteeism) as well as short-term and long-term work disability. Depression is one of the largest and fastest growing categories of work disability claims filings in the public and private disability insurance sectors.