CMS stands for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an operating division of the Department of Health and Human Services. This agency manages several large medical care programs including Medicare, Medicaid and the Health Insurance Marketplace as well as policies and procedures designed to ensure smooth operations of each. CMS also collects data to detect fraudulent practices in healthcare as well as to provide reports to Congress and other government bodies.

CMS strives to ensure Medicare recipients have access to high-quality healthcare services, and provides incentives to encourage top facilities to deliver high-quality treatments, while penalizing poor performing providers by lowering reimbursement rates – helping improve care quality across the board while simultaneously decreasing overall healthcare costs.

CMS furthers its mission by increasing transparency in the health insurance marketplace and informing Americans about their options. To this end, the agency regularly releases premiums and deductibles information for Medicare and the Health Insurance Marketplace; furthermore it oversees compliance with federal requirements related to consumer protection such as prohibition of denial for preexisting conditions; annual or lifetime dollar limits on essential benefits; as well as rating rules which mandate insurers spend certain percentage of premiums on clinical services and quality improvement initiatives.

CMS invests heavily in employee professional development to foster a healthy and sustainable workforce, offering training on various healthcare topics as well as management and leadership skills. Furthermore, CMS has initiated numerous employee recognition and wellness initiatives designed to create a positive work environment – for instance Diversity and Inclusion courses (DEI), robust mentoring programs and providing resources that support health and wellbeing are just some of these measures.

CMS ensures the programs it administers are staffed with qualified healthcare professionals by mandating that any health care organization that wishes to receive payments from Medicare or Medicaid must first undergo an accreditation process by an independent organization approved by CMS. This certification process takes place through an accreditation program overseen by CMS itself.

Additionally, CMS certification program establishes criteria for accrediting organizations (AOs) and conducts surveys to confirm they meet all necessary standards.

CMS works closely with states and other partners to ensure people who need assistance gaining affordable, quality health coverage can access it. In doing so, millions of individuals receive better, more tailored healthcare that suits them personally. As terminations of Medicaid enrollment end and regular eligibility and enrollment operations resume, CMS employs every tool available to it in order to fulfill this important mission.

One of the primary challenges associated with healthcare should be free is how best to allocate limited resources. Some people believe (a) that healthcare should be like any other consumer product or service like haircuts, car repairs or oil changes in that some can afford and some cannot and deciding who pays is not a moral question (b). Another view holds that healthcare is an integral public good like roads, police protection or national defense that should be provided as part of government policy (c). Finally a third approach suggests healthcare is a right that needs to be protected for all individuals (d).

Assuming this to be true, some philosophers believe a universal health care system provides the most efficient means of disbursing resources across citizens. Those who believe healthcare is a fundamental right have two theoretical approaches to consider in regards to this question: libertarianism and liberal-social welfare concepts.

Libertarians believe that healthcare should remain private market driven. Individuals would then have access to healthcare from various providers (private hospitals, clinics and insurance companies – not for profit and for-profit alike), selecting their preferred providers according to what was most suitable. Unfortunately this approach overlooks the fact that current health systems tend to force Americans into healthcare coverage through employers and/or payment of mandatory premiums or out-of-pocket costs imposed on them by law.

The other primary theoretical approach is a liberal, social welfare conception of distributive justice that holds that all citizens deserve their needs and wants met in an equitable fashion. This principle seeks to ensure that each person can access basic services and facilities necessary for living a dignified life, such as adequate food, shelter and healthcare services. This position seems to recognize that some lives are of greater worth than others, thus justifying prioritizing those in greater need first. Unfortunately, such an approach can be challenging in such a vast country as the US with diverse geographic regions, distinct cultures, political/religious/ethnic/racial distinctions and distinct health needs and challenges for each region and community.

At its core lies a fundamental problem posed by healthcare’s prohibitively high costs: when people are forced to cover them out of pocket without access to public assistance or borrowing against future earnings, their finances may become severely stressed – forcing them into poverty or forcing them into choosing between purchasing essential food items or healthcare. When forced to choose between healthcare or essential items like food or other essentials for payment purposes alone, many may opt for healthcare at the expense of preventative treatments; and due to impositions like premiums, deductibles, and co-pays which make poor people pay more than others for similar healthcare.