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Medicaid & the Law

Legal, regulatory and strategic advice regarding America's largest health insurance payer, and one of the most complicated and least understood areas of healthcare law.

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An Impoundment By Any Other Name
Blog January 29, 2025
A Monday night memorandum issued by the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) ordered federal agencies to “temporarily pause” all federal funding and other agency activities that “may be implicated by” the slew of executive orders Trump issued last week…
A Deeper Dive into CMS' Multiple Best Prices Policy
Blog January 15, 2021
As my colleague Tom wrote about in a recent post, the Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services (CMS) has finally responded to a growing chorus of stakeholders that government price reporting requirements, particularly Medicaid Best Price (BP), are stifling innovative value-based contracting arrangements (VBAs).  As the proverbial wisdom goes, “nothing changes if nothing changes,” and CMS' recently finalized proposal to allow manufacturers to report multiple BPs is meant to stimulate innovative…
CMS Reneges on Historic Grand Bargain with Manufacturers in Tennessee Wavier Approval
Blog January 12, 2021
If you have not already read it, you can read our main summary of the Tennessee waiver approval HERE. Now that we have had the chance to read and meditate on the historic Medicaid waiver approved on Friday January 8th, giving Tennessee permission from the Federal government to fundamentally alter Medicaids traditional matching financing structure for the 1.5 million Tennesseans who rely on the program for healthcare services…
CMS Approves Tennessee Block Grant Waiver: A Summary and Analysis from your Editors
Blog January 11, 2021
For our discussion of the new closed formulary flexibility approved in Tennessee, you can read our follow-up post here.  Introduction On Friday January 8th, in the final days of the Trump Administration, CMS announced approval of a first-in-the-nation waiver that would permit Tennessee to transition from Medicaid's longstanding, open-ended financing model to a modified “block grant”…
CMS Weighs in on FDA Importation Rule
Blog September 28, 2020
On September 24, 2020 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took two major steps to implement its Safe Importation Action Plan, including publishing a new Final Rule allowing the importation of certain prescription drugs from Canada, and a Final Guidance describing procedures to allow manufacturers to obtain National Drug Codes (NDC) for FDA-approved drugs originally intended to be marketed in a foreign country ( referred to as “multi-market approved products” or “MMA products”)…
HHS Updates Medicaid Safety Net Payment Policies
Blog July 07, 2020
Last month, we described the announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announcing the allocation to Medicaid providers under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.  In the past couple of days, HHS has updated its policies regarding the Medicaid allocation (including the allocation to safety net providers) and we thought now would be a good time to highlight those updated policies. By way of background…
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Blog Editors

About Our Blog

Foley Hoag has a unique team of healthcare lawyers and specialists with decades of experience in statutory and regulatory analysis, compliance, government investigations, litigation and corporate transactions. Most of our lawyers and healthcare policy specialists have had a direct hand in shaping virtually every healthcare law and regulation enacted over the past four decades, including:

  • The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010
  • The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003
  • The Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997
  • The Balanced Budget Act of 1997
  • The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)
  • Budget reconciliation laws of the 1980s

Medicaid is also, by far, the largest health insurance payer in the United States and has even surpassed Medicare in terms of the number of enrollees. Medicaid is a crucial component in America’s health care system.


Our focus includes:

  • Medicaid coverage and reimbursement issues for innovative pharmaceutical products
  • Legal, regulatory and strategic advice for Medicaid mental health providers and payers
  • Medicaid waivers
  • State coverage of the Medicaid expansion population
  • State-specific Medicaid issues
  • Medicaid financing
  • Medicaid and long-term care

Blog Editors