Trump administration expedites Medicare payments to providers amid coronavirus

Dive Insight: The coronavirus outbreak has surged in the U.S. in recent days, exposing gaping holes in an already overtaxed healthcare system and threatening to bankrupt providers, especially small, independent ones. Hospitals have been asked to halt all non-essential elective surgeries to shore up resources for COVID-19, removing a lucrative source of income for providers as the novel coronavirus has infected more than 143,000 people in the U.S. and killed more than 2,500 as of Monday morning. CMS' actions over the weekend to more quickly get Medicare payments to providers to bolster their finances come days after President Donald Trump signed a $2 trillion stimulus package meant to get the U.S. economy moving again. The so-called CARES Act, which made changes allowing CMS to expand which providers qualify for the accelerated traditional fee-for-service Medicare payments, benchmarks some $100 billion for hospitals, though it's not entirely clear how the money will be apportioned. "With our nation's health care providers on the front lines in the fight against COVID-19, dollars and cents shouldn't be adding to their worries," CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. CMS last made the advance payments available to providers during Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in 2017.