Trump administration seeks to drop rule that aims to ensure there are enough doctors to treat Medicaid patients

The Trump administration wants to kill a 2016 rule meant to ensure there are enough doctors to treat beneficiaries of the federal-state Medicaid program, which covers about one in five American citizens and nearly one in four rural citizens under 65 (when Medicare kicks in).

"State health officials say the rule, which requires states to monitor whether Medicaid reimbursement rates are high enough to keep doctors in the program, forces them to spend a lot of time collecting and analyzing data with little benefit," Michael Ollove reports for Stateline. "Health-care advocates, though, fear that dropping the regulation would enable states to set those payments at a level that would cause some of the 72 million Americans who rely on Medicaid to scramble for health care. Research shows that when reimbursement rates drop, fewer providers agree to accept low-income Medicaid patients."

For that reason, many doctors don't accept Medicaid patients, and critics of Medicaid expansion under Obamacare say getting a Medicaid card doesn't guarantee that you'll get a health-care provider.

Advocates of the proposal say the Obama-era regulation, called the Medicaid Access Rule, hasn't improved patient access and is a bureaucratic bother. Opponents say the rule hasn't been in place long enough and needs more time for effects to be visible, Ollove reports.

"CMS last year called for a significant watering down of the Obama rule. Last month, the agency proposed to scrap it altogether," Ollove reports. "The comment period on elimination of the rule runs through next month, after which CMS will announce its decision."