Legislation to Keep Government Open Provides Relief for Medicare AAP Repayment

The Continuing Resolution (HR 8337), which will fund the government through Dec. 11, first passed by the House of Representatives and then Senate and signed by President Trump on September 30, includes better terms for providers to repay loans from the Medicare Advance and Accelerated Payments program, which enabled providers to get advance loans to cover major financial hits caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The loans were to begin to come due starting on Aug. 1, which would have allowed CMS to begin garnishing Medicare fee-for-service payments to such providers to repay the loans. However, CMS unilaterally decided to hold off as lawmakers negotiated the bill.

Many provider groups (including CPMA) expressed significant concern that the original loan repayment terms and timeline would be extremely difficult for many cash-strapped doctor's offices and hospitals to meet, as a result of the burden imposed by COVID-19.

Congress made the following adjustments to the repayment timeline and terms:

• recoupment of disbursed funds postponed until 365 days after the advance payment has been issued to a physician practice; the balance would be due by September 2022;
• reduced the per-claim recoupment amount from 100 percent to 25 percent for the first 11 months and the 50 percent of claims withheld for an additional six months—if not repaid in full, the 9.6-percent interest rate kicks in; and
• lowered the interest rate from 9.6 percent to 4 percent.

(Modern Healthcare/APMA)