Health Affairs April 13, 2021
On March 11, 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act, increasing the federal matching assistance percentage (FMAP) in Medicaid by 10 percentage points for home and community-based services (HCBS) provided from April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022. By requiring this increase in federal matching funds to supplement and not supplant state spending on HCBS, it infuses significant federal dollars into home and community-based care financed by Medicaid. President Biden rapidly followed up on March 31 with an astonishing proposal of $400 billion, as part of his American Jobs Plan, to expand access to HCBS and create good caregiving jobs.
It’s hard to imagine a more important time for federal action to modernize our aging...