HAP's Latest News

Governor Wolf and the Pennsylvania General Assembly agreed to an almost $34 billion budget for the 2019–2020 state fiscal year. Of importance to hospitals and their patients and communities, the budget ensures programs funded from the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) continue to be fully funded. This includes support for hospitals to care for vulnerable patients through uncompensated care or extraordinary expense payments, as well as funds for CURE grants supporting health research.

Pennsylvania’s legislative leaders have approved a state budget plan that will help to continue to expand access to health care at the commonwealth’s hospitals. The state’s General Assembly members passed a nearly $34 billion plan that funds supplemental Medicaid funding lines for the commonwealth’s critical access hospitals, burn and trauma centers, and obstetric and neonatal intensive care units, and also preserves Tobacco Settlement Fund dollars for health care.

Federal legislation to strengthen the health care workforce serving on the front lines of the nation’s opioid epidemic earned the approval of the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee in a legislative mark-up on Wednesday, and will now await consideration before the full House.

HAP, members, and stakeholders testified this week in opposition to a proposed change to venue reform. The Legislative Budget and Finance Committee (LBFC) held a two-day hearing about the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Civil Procedural Rules Committee proposal to change the medical professional liability venue reform adopted during 2002.

In an executive order issued Monday, the Trump Administration directed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other agencies to develop rules requiring hospitals to disclose prices that reflect what insurers pay for services. The rules also will require health care providers and insurers to disclose out-of-pocket costs that consumers will face before they receive health care services.