Cartoon – Getting Back to First Principles
Monthly Archives: May 2018
Cartoon – You’re Making Us Look Bad
Cartoon – Wishful Thinking
Cartoon – Paper or Plastic?
Cartoon – You will Bargain Away
Cartoon – Only One Personal Flaw
Implications of the ACA Medicaid Expansion: A Look at the Data and Evidence
Implications of the ACA Medicaid Expansion: A Look at the Data and Evidence
More than four years after the implementation of the Medicaid expansion included in the Affordable Care Act, debate and controversy around the implications of the expansion continue. Despite a large body of research that shows that the Medicaid expansion results in gains in coverage, improvements in access and financial security, and economic benefits for states and providers, some argue that the Medicaid expansion has broadened the program beyond its original intent diverting spending from the “truly needy”, offers poor quality and limited access to providers, and has increased state costs. New proposals allow states to implement policies never approved before including conditioning Medicaid eligibility on work or community engagement. New complex requirements run counter to the post-ACA movement of Medicaid integration with other health programs and streamlined enrollment processes. This brief examines evidence of the effects of the Medicaid expansion and some changes being implemented through waivers. Many of the findings on the effects of expansion cited in this brief are drawn from the 202 studies included in our comprehensive literature review that includes additional citations on coverage, access, and economic effects of the Medicaid expansion. Key findings include the following:
- Coverage: Research and data show that Medicaid expansion has resulted in coverage gains without diverting coverage from traditional groups; for example, data do not support a relationship between states’ expansion status and community-based services waiver waiting lists. Reductions in Medicaid coverage would result in an increase in the uninsured population.
- Access, Affordability, and Health Outcomes: Research demonstrates that Medicaid generally, and expansion specifically, positively affects access to care, utilization of services, the affordability of care, and financial security among the low-income population. While there is a growing body of evidence on Medicaid and outcomes, further research is needed to more fully determine the health effect of expansion on outcomes given that measureable changes take time to occur.
- Economic Effects: Analyses find positive economic effects of expansion largely tied to the infusion of federal dollars, despite Medicaid enrollment growth initially exceeding projections in many states. Some studies look at 2014-2016 when expansion costs were 100% financed by the federal government, others studies project net fiscal gains even after states start to pay a share of expansion costs (up to 10% by 2020). Studies also show that Medicaid expansion resulted in reductions in uninsured visits and uncompensated care costs for hospitals, clinics, and other providers.
- Expansion and Work: Studies find that Medicaid expansion has had positive or neutral effects on employment and the labor market and new work requirement proposals add complexity and could result in coverage losses for many who are working or face barriers to work.
Americans’ Confidence in Their Ability to Pay for Health Care Is Falling
President Trump is expected to soon address the nation about the rising cost of prescription drugs. But Americans are worried about more than drug prices. New findings from the Commonwealth Fund Affordable Care Act Tracking Survey show that consumers’ confidence in their ability to afford all their needed health care continues to decline.
Last week, we reported that the survey indicated a small but significant increase in the uninsured rate among working-age adults since 2016. In this post, we look at people’s views of the affordability of their health care. The Affordable Care Act Tracking Survey is a nationally representative telephone survey conducted by SSRS that tracks coverage rates among 19-to-64-year-olds, and has focused in particular on the experiences of adults who have gained coverage through the marketplaces and Medicaid. The latest wave of the survey was conducted between February and March 2018.1
Findings
Confidence in Ability to Afford Health Care Continues to Decline
In each wave of the survey, we’ve asked respondents whether they have confidence in their ability to afford health care if they were to become seriously ill. In 2018, 62.4 percent of adults said they were very or somewhat confident they could afford their health care, down from a high of nearly 70 percent in 2015 (Table 1). Only about half of people with incomes less than 250 percent of poverty ($30,150 for an individual) were confident they could afford care if they were to become very sick, down from 60 percent in 2015 and about 20 percentage points lower than the rate for adults with higher incomes. There were also significant declines in confidence among young adults, those ages 50 to 64, women, and people with health problems. Declines were significant among both Democrats and Republicans.
People in Employer Plans Have the Greatest Confidence in Their Insurance
We asked people with health insurance how confident they were that their current insurance will help them afford the health care they need this year. Majorities of adults were somewhat or very confident in their coverage; those with employer coverage were the most confident. More than half (55%) of adults insured through an employer were very confident their coverage would help them afford their care compared to 31 percent of adults with individual market coverage and 41 percent of people with Medicaid (Table 2). The least confident were adults enrolled in Medicare. Working-age adults enrolled in Medicare were the sickest among insured adults and the second-poorest after those covered by Medicaid (data not shown).2
One-Quarter of Adults Said Health Care Became Harder to Afford
We asked people whether, over the past year, their health care, including prescription drugs, had become harder for them to afford, easier to afford, or if there had been no change. The majority (66%) said there had been no change, one-quarter (24%) said it had become harder to afford, and 8 percent said it had become easier (Table 3). People with individual market coverage were significantly more likely than those with employer coverage or Medicaid to say health care had become harder to afford. About one-third of adults with deductibles of $1,000 or more said health care had become harder to afford, twice the share of those who had no deductible. About one-third of those enrolled in Medicare and 41 percent who were uninsured also reported that their health care had become harder to afford.
Only About Half of Americans Would Have Money to Pay for an Unexpected Medical Bill
Accidents and other medical emergencies can leave both uninsured and insured people with unexpected medical bills, which usually require prompt payment. We asked people if they would have the money to pay a $1,000 medical bill within 30 days in the case of an unexpected medical event. Nearly half (46%) said they would not have the money to cover such a bill in that time frame (Table 4). Women, people of color, people who are uninsured, those covered by Medicaid or Medicare, and those with incomes under 250 percent of poverty were among the most likely to say they couldn’t pay the bill.
Health Care Is Among People’s Top Four Greatest Personal Financial Concerns
Fourteen percent of adults said that health care was their biggest personal financial concern, after mortgage or rent (23%), student loans (17%), and retirement (17%) (Table 5). Those most likely to cite health care as their greatest financial concern were people who could potentially face high out-of-pocket costs because they were uninsured or had high-deductible health plans.
Policy Implications
Uninsured adults are the least confident in their ability to pay medical bills. But the risk of high out-of-pocket health care costs doesn’t end when someone enrolls in a health plan. The proliferation and growth of high-deductible health plans in both the individual and employer insurance markets is leaving people with unaffordable health care costs. Many adults enrolled in Medicare for reasons of disability or serious illness also report unease about their health care costs. An estimated 41 million insured adults have such high out-of-pocket costs and deductibles relative to their incomes that they are effectively underinsured. As this survey indicates, the nation’s health care cost burden is felt disproportionately by people with low and moderate incomes, people of color, and women.
The ACA’s reforms to the individual insurance market have doubled the number of people who now get insurance on that market to an estimated 17 million, with approximately half receiving subsidies through the ACA marketplaces. The ACA also has made it possible for people who were regularly denied coverage by insurers — older Americans and those with health problems — to get insurance. They are now entitled by law to an offer should they want to buy a plan.
But as this survey suggests, the ACA’s reforms did not fully resolve the individual market’s relatively higher costs for all those enrolled, compared to employer coverage or Medicaid. Moreover, recent actions by Congress and the Trump administration, including the repeal of the individual mandate penalty and loosened restrictions on plans that don’t comply with the ACA, are expected to exacerbate those costs for many. In the survey, people with individual market coverage are more likely than those with employer coverage or Medicaid to say that their health care, including prescription drugs, has become harder to afford in the past year. They express less confidence than those with employer coverage that their insurance will help them afford their care this year. As explained in the first post, there are a number of policy options that Congress can pursue that would improve individual market insurance’s affordability and cost protection. In the absence of bipartisan Congressional agreement on legislation, several states are currently pursuing their own solutions. But if current trends continue, the federal government will likely confront growing pressure to provide a national solution to America’s incipient health care affordability crisis.
Premium hikes reignite the ObamaCare wars
The ObamaCare premium wars are back.
The cost of health insurance plans on the ObamaCare exchanges could jump in the coming weeks, some by double digits, inflaming the issue ahead of the midterm elections.
Democrats argue the price increases are the result of what they refer to as “Republican sabotage.” They contend that, since the GOP controls Congress and the White House, the price hikes are their responsibility — and that’s the message they plan to take into the fall campaign.
“If these early states are any indication, health insurance companies are going to ask for huge hikes in the wake of President Trumpand congressional Republicans’ repeated efforts to sabotage our health-care system,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a press conference last week. “And we Democrats are going to be relentless in making sure the American people exactly understand who is to blame for the rates.”
Republicans counter that it was Democrats who passed the law, enacted in 2010, in the first place and without any GOP votes. And they blame Democrats for the failure to pass a bill that was aimed at shoring up ObamaCare’s exchanges.
Democrats wrote the Affordable Care Act, so “they should look in the mirror,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said last week on the Senate floor.
“And this is the very worst. When Republicans were prepared one month ago to stabilize these markets — and according to the Oliver Wyman health-care experts, to lower rates by up to 40 percent over three years — the Democrats said no,” he said.
For years, Republicans had the upper hand on health care, with the backlash to the Affordable Care Act helping them win the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016.
During the Obama administration, Republicans railed against ObamaCare premium hikes while pledging to repeal and replace the law.
But that repeal push ended in failure last year, and Democrats say the political winds have shifted in their favor.
Democrats argue that any higher premiums this year will be a direct result of the Republican Congress and the Trump administration. They refer to certain actions by the GOP — such as the repeal of the individual mandate to have health insurance — as acts of “sabotage” that will siphon healthy people out of the ObamaCare insurance markets, leading to sicker people on the plans and higher costs.
“Thus far, Democrats have been on the defensive about premium increases,” said Cynthia Cox, a health insurance expert with the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Now they’re starting to play offense, and from our polling we’ve seen that a lot of the public now feels that the Trump administration and Congress are responsible for any problems with the [Affordable Care Act] going forward, so it may be that the politics of premium increases has changed.”
Protect Our Care, a pro-ObamaCare group, launched “Rate Watch” on Tuesday, a media campaign and website aimed at getting out the Democrat’s message that Republicans are to blame for rate hikes.
Only a handful of states have released proposed premiums for next year, as insurers are largely still hammering out what their preliminary rates are going to be.
In Maryland, the average proposed increase among insurers and plans was 30 percent. CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, for example, requested an 18.5 percent hike for its HMO plans and 91.4 percent for its PPO plans.
In Virginia, proposed rate hikes varied widely, from 15 percent to 64 percent. Vermont’s proposed premium increases were more modest.
It’s too early to know the full picture for what premiums will look like around the country for 2019. Insurers tend to file proposed rates in the late spring and early summer, and they’re generally not finalized until early fall — a little more than a month before the ObamaCare exchanges open for business on Nov. 1.
“It’s hard to come up with a general impression … but I think what we can expect is probably another year of double-digit rate increases driven in large part by the individual mandate repeal and the expansion of short-term health plans and association health plans,” Cox said.
The Trump administration proposed a rule to increase the length of time a consumer can keep a plan that doesn’t comply with ObamaCare’s insurance regulations from three months to nearly a year. Democrats deride those plans as “junk insurance.”
Association health plans would let small businesses and self-employed individuals band together to buy coverage that doesn’t comply with ObamaCare’s rules.
Republicans say the rules will expand choice and allow people to buy cheaper alternatives to ObamaCare plans.
Some insurers have cited the repeal of the individual mandate as a factor in their decision to propose rate hikes, and at least one also included the proposed regulations from the administration as a factor.
Some insurance commissioners across the country are approaching the open enrollment period with a level of “concern and a bit of trepidation,” said Julie Mix McPeak, Tennessee’s insurance commissioner who serves as the president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
In McPeak’s home state, she’s hopeful that signs are pointing to rates beginning to plateau and that Tennessee won’t see the large hikes of years past.
“My experience in Tennessee … is not typical for all of the states in the United States,” said McPeak, who was appointed to run the state’s insurance department by Gov. Bill Haslam (R.).
“I’m hearing from some of my colleagues from the national perspective that they are looking at significant rate increases,” she said.
Dave Jones, California’s Democratic insurance commissioner, said he’s worried that some insurers may leave parts of the state.
“We’re working closely with our exchange and other California agencies to do everything we can to encourage insurers to stay and to create as much stability as we can, not withstanding all of the rocks that the Trump administration is throwing at health-care reform,” he said.
If the short-term and association health plan rules are implemented, Jones said he’s prepared to file litigation aimed at stopping the regulations.
In North Dakota, the state’s Republican insurance commissioner is more optimistic.
Jon Godfread said he expects North Dakota’s marketplace will consist of three carriers selling plans across the state — an increase from last year, when areas had only one or two insurers to choose from.
As for rate hikes, he’s hoping in the low double-digits or, worst case, in the 18 percent to 22 percent range. He believes the repeal of the individual mandate won’t have much impact on consumer behavior in North Dakota because people who couldn’t afford insurance have likely already left the marketplace in the state.
“Health insurance and health care by its very nature is demographic,” Godfread said. “We may be leading into a somewhat calm year — in North Dakota, at least that’s what we’re hoping for. But that doesn’t mean my colleagues in Iowa and Nebraska and other places aren’t facing some pretty significant challenges, and we very well, that could be us next year, or it could be us this year still, too. There’s a lot of time between now and open enrollment.”
Auditor “shocked” by massive billing schemes at rural hospitals
Rural hospitals across the country are closing at the highest rates in decades. Since 2010, 83 have shuttered. Desperate to stay open, some hospitals got caught up in dubious billing schemes. In March, CBS News investigated questionable billing at rural hospitals in Georgia and Florida.
Insurance companies reimburse rural hospitals at higher rates to help keep critical healthcare in those communities. Those higher rates have made rural hospitals attractive targets for schemes that have generated nearly half a billion dollars in allegedly fraudulent billing.
In 2016, Missouri state auditor Nicole Galloway began examining the finances of several rural hospitals in her state. One was Putnam County Memorial, a 15-bed hospital in Unionville, Missouri, struggling to keep its doors open.
“We were shocked….When we started to look at the financial records and notice that tens of millions of dollars were coming through, I remember sitting down at the table with my audit staff and, you know, I just said we gotta dig deeper on this,” Galloway told CBS News’ Jim Axelrod.
Her team discovered a management company called Hospital Partners had swooped in weeks before Putnam was about to close, promising to turn it around. They made deals with labs around the country to funnel billing for blood tests and drug screens through Putnam, which collects higher reimbursement rates as a rural hospital. Putnam kept about 15 percent; most of the money was wired back to the labs and the management company.
“Essentially the hospital appeared to act as a shell company for these questionable lab billings,” Galloway explained. “In a six-month period, the hospital funneled through about $92 million in revenues. To put that in perspective, the previous year their total revenues were $7.5 million.”
And it wasn’t just happening at Putnam. According to court filings reviewed by CBS News, insurance companies are now attempting to claw back nearly a half a billion dollars they paid rural hospitals across the country with similar billing arrangements which they call “fraudulent.” They all declined our requests for an interview so we sat down with Jason Mehta, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in healthcare fraud.
“The question’s gonna be did the laboratories intend to cheat? Did they intend to trick? Did they mislead the insurance companies? Because simply making extra money isn’t a crime in and of itself. It’s the question of, was someone tricked? Was some deceived?” Mehta said.
Insurance companies say one way labs deceived them was paying kickbacks to healthcare providers for specimens they could then bill at the higher reimbursement rates. CBS News obtained a voicemail of a lab representative soliciting samples from a rehab center in California.
“He would send about, as soon as you guys sent 300 samples he would just send you $100,000 right then and there,” the representative is heard saying on the message.
“If I heard that message and we were talking about Medicare money, I would be very, very concerned and I would be opening an investigation immediately,” Mehta said. “In my experience, some of the most sophisticated actors in this space, some of the ones that….get the most amount of money from the healthcare programs, are those that know exactly where the line is, and skirt right up to that line.”
What Mehta told us could cross the line is a key finding of Nicole Galloway’s audit.
“Several months after the questionable lab billings had started, there was no operating lab in the hospital,” she said.
Which begs the question, how could they be billing for lab tests if there was no lab in the hospital?
In March, Blue Cross Blue Shield filed a $60 million lawsuit against Hospital Partners, alleging their arrangement with labs was a “fraudulent scheme.” Hospital Partners is suing Galloway, claiming she had no right to audit Putnam.
“They (Hospital Partners) are pushing back on us but I will tell you that will not stop me from doing my job on behalf of taxpayers,” Galloway said.
In a statement, Hospital Partners said “Putnam County Memorial Hospital is authorized by law to assign and bill for clinical laboratory testing provided at a reference lab.” On Tuesday, the Missouri Attorney General’s office told “CBS This Morning” it is actively investigating this matter.
HENRY KOTULA 