Beginning October 1, CMS will cut payments for 2,583 hospitals by as much as 3% for each Medicare case, according to federal data released September 30, cited in a Kaiser Health News report. These reductions mark the eighth round of hospital penalties in the form of payment cuts since 2012 under the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, a value-based Medicare purchasing program that penalizes hospitals with excess readmissions under Section 3025 of the ACA. The reductions are expected to reduce payments to penalized hospitals by more than half a billion dollars between October 1, 2019 and September 30, 2020.