Summary
As Congress moves on from the American Health Care Act, the next major health policy item on its agenda — in addition to reauthorizing FDA user fees — is reauthorization of CHIP funding and the Medicare extenders expected to travel with the CHIP package. TRP Health Policy has prepared a chart of provisions that will potentially be included in a CHIP and Medicare extenders package. These items were most recently extended in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA, the permanent SGR repeal bill) and, for the most part, expire on Sept. 30, 2017, or Dec. 31, 2017.
We have summarized each item and included a rough estimate of the costs associated with extending them by two years (the timeframe by which they were most recently extended), using the CBO score of MACRA as a guide. At this point, it is difficult to project how long these items will be extended or how they will be structured (especially for CHIP). But we believe this is the best ballpark available.
If all expiring items are extended by two years, the total cost of the package will be $22.75 billion over 10 years. That amount will likely need to be offset with healthcare-related savings that will come into focus as the CHIP funding reauthorization and Medicare extenders process gets underway.