Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital Payments

June 20, 2013
The report was release by the Congressional Research Service. It focuses on the Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) program payments and changes to the program due health reform, but mentions the Medicare DSH program. The DSH programs make payments to hospitals that provide a large proportion of services to low-income patients. However, Medicare and Medicaid have different criteria for identifying DSH hospitals, and the programs have different calculations for determining DSH payment amounts. For federal fiscal year 2012, Medicare DSH payments were estimated at $10.8 billion. Federal Medicaid DSH allotments to states that year totaled . . .