The concept of person-centered planning has been at play for decades, yet the publication of the Home and Community-based Services (HCBS) Settings Final Rule (“Final Rule”) in 2014 was the first time person-centeredness was explicitly tied to ongoing funding of home and community-based settings under the various Medicaid waiver authorities. As states work to comply with the Final Rule, agencies and service providers should embrace the important role they play in a state’s ability to make the shift to person-centeredness.

On Friday, September 25, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois held that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) improperly disallowed claims for $140 million in Medicaid reimbursements, because the method used by Illinois to adjust the particular payments was a reasonable interpretation of the Illinois state Medicaid plan. 

Following last month’s decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals holding the “mandate” of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to be unconstitutional, the states defending the ACA requested the U.S. Supreme Court hear the case during its current term.

On Wednesday, December 18, 2019, a 3-judge panel of the Federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the “mandate” provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is unconstitutional. The panel sent the case back to Judge Reed O’Connor of the Federal District Court in Fort Worth Texas to “conduct a more searching inquiry” into which of the law’s many provisions could survive without the mandate.