This letter to Chairman Chuck Grassley, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, and Ron Wyden, the committee’s ranking member, responds to the Committee’s March 3, 2020 request to stakeholders to submit data and findings on factors contributing to poor maternal health outcomes in the United States.
In the letter, MACPAC Chair Melanie Bella describes the Commission’s efforts over the past year to document Medicaid’s substantial role in financing maternity care; areas where the program is performing well and where improvement is needed. The letter details key findings from external research and insights from state, federal, and academic experts who presented at Commission meetings. It also directs the Committee to the Commission’s April 2019 issue brief, Medicaid Payment Initiatives to Improve Maternal and Birth Outcomes, and its January 2020 fact sheet, Financing Maternity Care: Medicaid’s Role, as well as an inventory of Medicaid policies that summarizes state and territorial efforts to address maternal health in Medicaid.
The letter notes that these resources represent only the first phase of MACPAC’s work on maternal health, which will culminate with two chapters in the Commission’s June 2020 report to Congress, one on maternity care generally, and the other on pregnant women with substance use disorder and infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome. Future analyses will focus on key policy solutions to address concerns about access to care and health outcomes for pregnant and postpartum Medicaid beneficiaries.