Sequester could impact Maryland hospital rates, Medicare waiver

Maryland’s Health Services Cost Review Commission will be taking up an important topic at its next monthly meeting: How to brace the state’s hospital system for a blow to Medicare payments.

The federal sequester calls for a 2 percent cut in Medicare spending that will hit every state and has hospital executives across the U.S. thinking about their budgets. But in Maryland health care leaders have one more thing to worry about — the state’s Medicare waiver. The state has already been toeing…