The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) administers relief grants to states, territories, and tribes to address behavioral health needs post-disaster through community-based outreach, crisis counseling, public education, and other supportive services. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds the program as support for mental health assistance and training. Learn more about how a disaster gets declared at the federal level and search FEMA’s list of disasters and other declarations.
USDA Rural Development Offers Disaster Assistance
Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a series of loans and grants for community facilities, businesses, water and infrastructure, and housing.
Medicare Billing Information for Advanced Primary Care Management Services
Starting January 1, 2025, eligible providers may use a new payment bundle for Advanced Primary Care Management (ACPM) that reflects the essential elements of advanced primary care, including principal care management, transitional care management and chronic care management. ACPM services combine elements of several existing care management and communication technology-based services
Update: RHC and FQHC CMS Medicare Benefit Policy Manual
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) updated the Medicare Benefit Policy Manual Chapter 13 for Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) with Calendar Year 2025 requirements and payment policies.
CMS Finalizes Technical Changes to Medicare Advantage and Prescription Drug Plans
In this final rule, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) implements changes related to Medicare Advantage (MA) inpatient admission decisions, vaccine and insulin cost sharing, the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan, Medicare Advantage dual eligible special needs plans (D-SNPs), Star Ratings, and other programmatic areas. CMS is not finalizing three provisions from the proposed rule:
- Enhancing Health Equity Analyses: Annual Health Equity Analysis of Utilization Management Policies;
- Procedures and Ensuring Equitable Access to Medicare Advantage Services—Guardrails for Artificial Intelligence; and
- Part D Coverage of Anti-Obesity Medications (AOMs) and Application to the Medicaid Program.
There are other provisions from the proposed rule that are not included in this final rule. CMS may address them in future rulemaking, as appropriate. As of January 2023, about 45 percent of rural Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in an MA plan.
The Rural and Urban Supply of Clinicians With a DEA Waiver to Prescribe Buprenorphine in 2022 Prior to the Elimination of the Waiver Requirement
Among key findings from the WWAMI Rural Health Research Center:
- Overall, the supply of eligible clinicians grew in both rural and urban counties in the five years from 2017 to 2022.
- Despite this growth, more rural counties lacked waivered clinicians (30.1 percent) compared to urban counties (10.4 percent) in 2022, and rural counties had a lower overall supply of clinicians per 100,000 population (25.2) compared to urban counties (32.6).
- Small and remote rural counties had the greatest proportion of counties without a clinician (41.3 percent) compared to other rural counties.
Pennsylvania Childhood Pre-K Fact Sheets & Mapping Available
Each year, PPC creates interactive maps for the Pre-K for PA campaign, and the 2025 maps and corresponding fact sheets are now available. Data on pre-k is available at the statewide, county, school district, and legislative district levels.
The maps highlight the unmet need for high-quality, publicly funded pre-k at each geographic level, including data points such as the eligible child population, high-quality, publicly funded enrollment, and the number of high-quality pre-k locations.
Statewide, of the 151,325 eligible children ages 3-4 living in Pennsylvania, only 44% have access to high-quality pre-kindergarten. With workforce challenges in the sector, an additional 8,477 pre-k staff are needed to serve the remaining eligible children.
As part of an enacted 2025-26 budget, the Pre-K for PA campaign is asking the General Assembly to:
- Support the proposed investment of $15 million in Pre-K Counts to help stabilize early learning providers by boosting per-child rates to help combat inflationary pressures and staffing shortages caused by low wages.
- Include an investment of $9.5 million for the Head Start Supplemental Assistance Program to help stabilize the Head Start Workforce.
Access the new fact sheet and online map here.
CMS Finalizes 2026 Payment Policy Updates for Medicare Advantage and Part D Programs
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the Calendar Year (CY) 2026 Rate Announcement for the Medicare Advantage (MA) and Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Programs that finalizes the payment policies for these programs. This release — combined with the CY 2026 MA and Part D final rule that was released on April 4 — makes annual routine and technical updates to the MA and Part D programs.
The actions taken by CMS help protect beneficiaries and taxpayers from waste, fraud, and abuse, while also driving access to high-quality, affordable healthcare through Medicare Advantage. By finalizing these payment policies, CMS is ensuring that Medicare Advantage continues to offer access to critical services in an efficient, accountable manner, further strengthening the program’s ability to serve beneficiaries.
Payments from the government to MA plans are expected to increase on average by 5.06% from 2025 to 2026. This is an increase of 2.83 percentage points since the CY 2026 Advance Notice, which is largely attributable to an increase in the effective growth rate. The method for setting the effective growth rate is set in statute and represents the average expected change in the benchmarks, used to determine payment for MA plans, based on the growth in Medicare per capita costs. The effective growth rate is 9.04%, which is higher than the estimate of 5.93% in the CY 2026 Advance Notice. This change is primarily due to the inclusion of additional data on fee-for-service (FFS) expenditures, including payment data through the fourth quarter of 2024, which was not included on account of the early Advance Notice publication.
In CY 2024, CMS initiated a three-year, phased-in approach for removing the medical education costs — related to services MA enrollees receive — from the historical and projected expenditures supporting the FFS costs that are included in the growth rate calculations. For CY 2026, CMS will complete the phase-in of the technical adjustment by applying 100% of the adjustment for MA-related medical education costs.
CMS is also completing a three-year phase-in of improvements to the MA risk adjustment model that the agency finalized in the CY 2024 Rate Announcement, with the first year of the three-year phase-in starting with CY 2024. CMS is committed to expanding access to affordable, high-quality care through Medicare Advantage, while also implementing measures to safeguard beneficiaries and taxpayers from waste, fraud, and abuse. These ongoing improvements support a sustainable program that benefits both current and future Medicare recipients.
CMS is concurrently releasing the Final CY 2026 Part D Redesign Program Instructions that continue to implement the redesign of the Medicare Part D program. These instructions contain a detailed description of, and guidance related to, changes to the Part D drug benefit in place for CY 2026.
The CY 2026 MA and Part D Rate Announcement may be viewed at https://www.cms.gov/files/document/2026-announcement.pdf.
A fact sheet discussing the provisions of the CY 2026 Rate Announcement can be viewed at https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/2026-medicare-advantage-and-part-d-rate-announcement.
The Final CY 2026 Part D Redesign Program Instructions can be found at https://www.cms.gov/files/document/final-cy-2026-part-d-redesign-program-instruction.pdf.
A fact sheet discussing the provisions of the Final CY 2026 Part D Redesign Program Instructions can be viewed at https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/final-cy-2026-part-d-redesign-program-instructions
Blockbuster Deal Will Wipe Out $30 Billion in Medical Debt. Even Backers Say It’s Not Enough.
Underscoring the massive scale of America’s medical debt problem, a New York-based nonprofit has struck a deal to pay off old medical bills for an estimated 20 million people.
Undue Medical Debt, which buys patient debt, is retiring $30 billion worth of unpaid bills in a single transaction with Pendrick Capital Partners, a Virginia-based debt trading company. The average patient debt being retired is $1,100, according to the nonprofit, with some reaching the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The deal will prevent the debt being sold and protect millions of people from being targeted by collectors. But even proponents of retiring patient debt acknowledge that these deals cannot solve a crisis that now touches around 100 million people in the U.S.
“We don’t think that the way we finance health care is sustainable,” Undue Medical Debt chief executive Allison Sesso said in an interview with KFF Health News. “Medical debt has unreasonable expectations,” she said. “The people who owe the debts can’t pay.”
In the past year alone, Americans borrowed an estimated $74 billion to pay for health care, a nationwide West Health-Gallup survey found. And even those who benefit from Undue’s debt relief may have other medical debt that won’t be relieved.
This large purchase also highlights the challenges that debt collectors, hospitals, and other health care providers face as patients rack up big bills that aren’t covered by their health insurance.
Dead Zone: Rural Hospitals and Patients Are Disconnected From Modern Care
Leroy Walker arrived at the county hospital short of breath. Walker, 65 and with chronic high blood pressure, was brought in by one of rural Greene County’s two working ambulances.
Nurses checked his heart activity with a portable electrocardiogram machine, took X-rays, and tucked him into Room 122 with an IV pump pushing magnesium into his arm.
“I feel better,” Walker said. Then: Beep. Beep. Beep.
The Greene County Health System, with only three doctors, has no intensive care unit or surgical services. The 20-bed hospital averages a few patients each night, many of them, like Walker, with chronic illnesses.
Greene County residents are some of the sickest in the nation, ranking near the top for rates of stroke, obesity, and high blood pressure, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Patients entering the hospital waiting area encounter floor tiles that are chipped and stained from years of use. A circular reception desk is abandoned, littered with flyers and advertisements.
But a less visible, more critical inequity is working against high-quality care for Walker and other patients: The hospital’s internet connection is a fraction of what experts say is sufficient. High-speed broadband is the new backbone of America’s health care system, which depends on electronic health records, high-tech wireless equipment, and telehealth access.
Greene is one of more than 200 counties with some of the nation’s worst access to not only reliable internet, but also primary care providers and behavioral health specialists, according to a KFF Health News analysis. Despite repeated federal promises to support telehealth, these places remain disconnected.
During his first term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order promising to improve “the financial economics of rural healthcare” and touted “access to high-quality care” through telehealth. In 2021, President Joe Biden committed billions to broadband expansion.
KFF Health News found that counties without fast, reliable internet and with shortages of health care providers are mostly rural. Nearly 60% of them have no hospital, and hospitals closed in nine of the counties in the past two decades, according to data collected by the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Click here for more information and a interactive map that shows where health care shortages and broadband deserts intersect.