On July 26, 2024, CMS approved the plan of North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) to use North Carolina’s Medicaid program to increase reimbursements to hospitals that forgive medical debts. The program would relieve as much as $4 billion in existing medical debt for families and individuals dating back to 2014, and it would also help prevent new debt in the future.
On July 1, 2024, Governor Cooper and NCDHHS announced that NCDHHS had submitted a request to CMS to approve the plan, which allows hospitals to elect whether to participate in the program and requires them to satisfy a set of conditions to be eligible for an increased amount of Medicaid funds. Hospitals…
