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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is unlikely to approve changes to Kentucky’s Medicaid program that would interfere with its “extremely successful” progress at helping more people get health insurance, a top official said Wednesday. HHS is currently considering a Medicaid waiver proposal, submitted last month by Gov. Matt Bevin, that would reshape the program that provides health insurance for 1.32 million Kentuckians. ... However, as it weighs Bevin’s proposal, HHS will keep its eyes on the sharp drop in the size of Kentucky’s uninsured population since former Gov. Steve Beshear expanded Medicaid coverage to working-poor adults in 2013, Aviva Aron-Dine, senior counselor to HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, told the Herald-Leader. (Cheves, 9/14)

A federal report on Wednesday criticized South Dakota’s commitment to fighting Medicaid fraud, finding the state is understaffed in a key area for rooting out fraud and abuse. The report from the United States Health and Human Service’s Office of Inspector General was ostensibly a review of the state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, or MFCU, within the attorney general’s office. Nationally, MFCUs are responsible for prosecuting Medicaid fraud cases, levying civil fines or prosecuting abuse and neglect cases. (Ellis, 9/14)

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that a group of Arizona Medicaid recipients who sued the government after it approved higher copayments for their care should still be able to recover attorneys’ fees in the case. The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court that said the patients could not collect because they did not ultimately win their case – even though the lower court judge agreed that the higher fees had been improperly approved. (Chavez, 9/14)