Today is the beginning of the 2020 federal fiscal year.

The Health Affairs Blog posted an article about the demise of OPM’s Multi-State Plan Program created by the Affordable Care Act. I was interested to learn that

Recently the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) decided to discontinue operations of the Multi-State Plan (MSP) Program. The decision came as the program, which provided health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health exchanges, had gone from providing coverage to more than 400,000 people in 35 states and the District of Columbia in 2015 to one state this year. 

The article discusses why the program failed. In my view, it was too complicated. 

Becker’s Hospital CFO Reports informs us that

In fiscal year 2020, CMS will penalize 2,583 hospitals for having too many Medicare patients readmitted within 30 days, according to federal data released Sept. 30 cited in a Kaiser Health News report.

Ouch. 

Becker’s Hospital Review has created a list of the thirteen U.S. hospitals that received the most emergency room visits in 2018. They are spread around the country, at least at first glance.