Monthly Archives: July 2019

Democrats are making Republican arguments about health care. Why?

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Dignity, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Medicare, Medicare Buy-In, Medicare for All, Respect, Single Payer Health System, Single Payer Healthcare System, Universal Healthcare System • Leave a comment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/26/democrats-are-making-republican-arguments-about-health-care-why/?fbclid=IwAR1mA1uEcNMiO12elygl_lSLxDD12kvHhzfYOO78Z50u7HAEv56yEVGL2Pc&utm_term=.e2f83bcb12ec

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The Democratic argument over health care is beginning to get heated, which unfortunately means that things are becoming more problematic. In fact, the candidates making what is arguably the most sensible policy choice are justifying it with some absolutely abominable arguments — arguments that should warm the heart of the Republican Party.

Right now there’s a divide within the party, with some of the presidential candidates including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren supporting single payer (though Warren hasn’t been specific), and most of the others including Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg suggesting some form of public option that would be voluntary, not Medicare For All but Medicare For All Who Want It.

I’ve come to believe that for all the benefits of a single payer system, trying to move immediately to one is a task with such overwhelming political obstacles and policy complications that it’s probably a better idea to achieve universal coverage through a dramatic expansion of public insurance while, for the moment, leaving substantial portions of the private system intact, even if that’s in many ways distasteful. I realize many readers will disagree with that, which is fine; we should continue to debate it.

But let’s at least grant that it’s a reasonable position to take. The problem with what’s happening now is that some advocates of the public option approach are sounding a lot like, well, Republicans.

Their most common talking point when defending their plan is some variation of “We can’t kick 150 million people off their insurance,” referring to the number of people who are covered by employer plans:

  • “We should have universal health care, but it shouldn’t be the kind of health care that kicks 150 million Americans off their health care,” says John Delaney.
  • Beto O’Rourke says Medicare-for-all “would force 180 million Americans off their insurance.”
  • “I am simply concerned about kicking half of America off their health insurance within four years, which is what [Medicare-for-all] would do,” says Amy Klobuchar.

The generous interpretation of this line is that it’s warning about widespread disruption; the other interpretation is that it’s meant to stoke the fear that if you now have coverage and single payer passes, you could be left with no insurance at all, which is just false. If we passed single payer, you’d move from your current plan to a different plan, one that depending on how it’s constructed would probably offer as good or better coverage at a lower cost.

The further danger is that that kind of talk inevitably leads one toward the promise that got Barack Obama into such trouble, “If you like your plan, you can keep it.” In fact, here’s O’Rourke saying that under his plan, “For those who have private, employer-sponsored insurance or members of unions who have fought for health care plans … they’ll be able to keep that.” And here’s Biden saying much the same thing: “If you like your health care plan, your employer-based plan, you can keep it. If in fact you have private insurance, you can keep it.”

Haven’t they learned anything?

While there may be political value in communicating to people that a public option would be voluntary, we have to tell them the truth, which is that if you’re going to open it to employers and not just individuals, some people will be moved to the public plan whether they want to or not, since their employers will make that choice for them. That’s how employer coverage works: What plan you’re on is seldom up to you, it’s a decision made by your employer.

And the broader truth is that no one, I repeat, no one gets to keep their plan if they like it even under the status quo. “If you like your plan, you can keep it” is a fantasy. If you have insurance through your employer, you’ve probably had the experience of your employer changing insurers or changing plans; many do it every year. Sometimes the new plan is better; often it’s not. But if you liked your plan, you didn’t get to keep it.

That’s even true of people on public insurance plans, though to a far lesser degree. Medicare and Medicaid go through changes, and benefits are added or taken away. It’s not up to you.

The trouble is that we have a situation where change is constant yet everyone is afraid of change, which makes it awfully tempting to encourage that fear. But the more we propagate the fiction that Americans, especially those with private insurance, aren’t vulnerable under the current system, the easier it will be to crush any reform effort.

Apart from the praise of the Affordable Care Act, this video could almost have been scripted by the Republican National Committee, with its paeans to private health insurance. Of particular note is the woman’s explanation of how she and her husband “earned” health coverage through decades of work, which implies that health care is not a right, as most Democrats believe, but a privilege one has to earn.

To top it off, Biden’s caption to the video says that “Because a union fought for their private health insurance plan, Marcy and her husband were able to retire with dignity and respect,” which is why Biden wants to let them stay on their existing insurance.

Let me suggest a crazy idea: What if retiring with dignity and respect wasn’t something you only got if you were lucky enough to be represented by a union (as a mere 1 in 10 American workers is, and 1 in 16 private sector workers), and only if that union happened to be successful in its fight to get you health benefits? What if everybody got dignity and respect? Isn’t that the world Joe Biden is trying to create?

You can make a strong case for both a single payer plan and one built around a public option. But please, Democrats, when you’re arguing for your preferred solution, don’t undermine the entire philosophical approach your party takes to health care. That only makes the job of reform more difficult.

 

 

Politicians Tackle Surprise Bills, but Not the Biggest Source of Them: Ambulances

Posted on by • Posted in Ambulance, Balance Billing, Health Policy, High Prices, Out of Network, Out of Pocket Expenses, Rev Cycle Management, Surprise Bills • Leave a comment

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A legislative push in Congress and states to end unexpected medical bills has omitted the ambulance industry.

After his son was hit by a car in San Francisco and taken away by ambulance, Karl Sporer was surprised to get a bill for $800.

Mr. Sporer had health insurance, which paid for part of the ride. But the ambulance provider felt that amount wasn’t enough, and billed the Sporer family for the balance.

“I paid it quickly,” Mr. Sporer said. “They go to collections if you don’t.”

That was 15 years ago, but ambulance companies around the nation are still sending such surprise bills to customers, as Mr. Sporer knows well. These days, he oversees the emergency medical services in neighboring Alameda County. The contract his county negotiated allows a private ambulance company to send similar bills to insured patients.

In most parts of medical care, you can choose a doctor or hospital that takes your insurance. But there are some types of care where politicians have begun tackling the “surprise” bills that occur when, say, patients go to an emergency room covered by their insurance and are treated by a physician who is not.

Five states have passed laws this year to restrict surprise billing in hospitals and doctor’s offices. Congress is working on a similar package of measures, after President Trump held a news conference in May urging action on the issue.

But none of these new policies will protect patients from surprise bills like the one Mr. Sporer received. Ordinary ambulances that travel on roads have been left out of every bill.

“Ambulances seem to be the worst example of surprise billing, given how often it occurs,” said Christopher Garmon, a health economist at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “If you call 911 for an ambulance, it’s basically a coin flip whether or not that ambulance will be in or out of network.”

Mr. Garmon’s research finds that 51 percent of ground ambulance rides will result in an out-of-network bill. For emergency room visits, that figure stands at only 19 percent.

Congress has shown little appetite to include ambulances in a federal law restricting surprise billing. One proposal would bar surprise bills from air ambulances, helicopters that transport patients who are at remote sites or who have life-threatening injuries. (These types of ambulances tend to be run by private companies.)

But that interest has not extended to more traditional ambulance services — in part because many are run by local and municipal governments.

Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and a key author of a Senate surprise billing proposal, said in an email that surprise bills from air ambulances were the more pressing issue because federal law prevents any local regulation of their prices. “Unlike air ambulances, ground ambulances can be regulated by states,” said Mr. Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee. “And Congress should continue to learn more about how to best solve that problem.”

The ambulance industry has brought its case to Capitol Hill, arranging meetings between members of Congress and their local ambulance operators.

“When we talk to our members of Congress, what we really emphasize is that we’re a little different from the other providers in the surprise billing discussion,” said Shawn Baird, president-elect of the American Ambulance Association. “We have a distinct, public process. The emergency room isn’t subject to any oversight of that kind.”

Patient advocates contend that this public oversight isn’t doing enough to protect patients, who often face surprise bills and forceful collection tactics from ambulance providers.

Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, worked on a 2016 California law to restrict surprise billing. Initially, he thought it made sense to include ambulances in that legislation.

“It’s our experience that ambulance providers bill quicker and are more aggressive in sending bills to collection,” Mr. Wright said. “If they’re being more aggressive, you might want legislation to deal with that one first.”

But obstacles quickly began to mount. Some were about policy, like whether California would need to offset the revenue local governments would lose.

Then there were the politics. “There is the political reality that it’s hard to go after an entire industry at once,” Mr. Wright said. “It’s hard to have a bill opposed by doctors and hospitals and ambulances. We did manage to get a strong protection against doctor billing, but that was an epic, brutal, three-year fight.”

The California law that passed in 2016 did not regulate ambulance prices.

Patient groups elsewhere also say they ran into political trouble. Of the five states that passed surprise billing regulations in 2019, only Colorado’s new law takes aim at ambulance billing — not by regulating it, but by forming a committee to study the issue.

“The surprise bills laws are hard enough to get,” said Chuck Bell, program director for advocacy at Consumer Reports, who worked to pass a Florida surprise billing law in 2016. “You’re struggling with health plans, hospitals and doctors and other provider groups. At a certain point you don’t want to invite another big gorilla in the room to further widen the brawl.”

On Capitol Hill, the ambulance services have been less aggressive than other health care providers in lobbying against their inclusion in reforms. But lawmakers have largely declined to even include them in the conversation.

Consumer advocates say the lack of state-level legislation has been a barrier.

“Since there are issues related to ambulances being run by municipalities, and, at the state level, there hasn’t been a lot of model law to inform federal law, I think that’s made some members hesitant to wade into that space,” said Claire McAndrew, the director of campaigns and partnerships at the health care consumer group Families USA.

Local governments generally finance their ambulance services through a mix of user fees and taxes. If ambulances charge less to patients, they typically need more government funding.

Municipal governments often publish the prices of their ambulance services online, and they can range substantially. In Moraga and Orinda, in the Bay Area, the base rate for an ambulance ride is $2,600, plus $42 for each mile traveled. In Marion County, Fla., the most basic kind of ambulance ride costs $550, plus $11.25 per mile.

In many communities, there is no choice of ambulances.

Older patients are not charged such fees. Medicare, which also covers some people with disabilities, pays set prices for ambulance rides — a base rate of around $225 for the most typical type of care, in addition to a mileage fee — and forbids the companies to send patients additional bills.

In Bucks County, Pa., where it is $1,500 for a basic ambulance ride, in addition to $16 per mile, the emergency medical service gets 78 percent of its revenue from ambulance billing, according to Chuck Pressler, the executive director of the Central Bucks Emergency Medical Services. The rest of the budget comes from taxes raised by local cities and fund-raising drives.

“There is an expectation that we just plant money trees, that people should come in and work for free,” Mr. Pressler said of proposals to tamp down ambulance billing. “When was the last time you saw the police send out a fund-raiser? They don’t have to do that. Why do we have to raise money to come get you when you’re sick?”

 

 

 

As HHS muses more MA flexibility, payers see roadblocks to nonmedical benefits

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https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/as-hhs-muses-more-ma-flexibility-payers-see-roadblocks-to-nonmedical-benef/559350/

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New regulatory flexibility letting Medicare Advantage plans sell supplemental benefits has opened up a new world of services, from transportation to nutrition, for tens of millions of beneficiaries. But implementation challenges, uncertain return on investment and a lack of clarity on what benefits are allowed may be giving payers, especially the smaller ones, pause on offering the options, experts say.

CMS expanded supplemental benefits in the popular privately-run Medicare plans in an April final rule. Now, Medicare Advantage plans can offer a host of non-traditional benefits, such as at-home grocery delivery, non-emergency medical transportation to doctor appointments or home modifications like installing air conditioning for beneficiaries with asthma and home renovations for fall-prone elderly.

And the department wants to go further than the MA supplemental benefits introduced in April, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said this week at a Better Medicare Alliance annual conference. Because MA plans have budgetary restrictions and a higher risk appetite, the government is comfortable granting them more leeway if it lowers costs and boosts health outcomes.

“We want to open up more opportunities for MA plans and entities they work with, including creative value-based insurance design arrangements, moving care to the home and community and new ways for MA plans to improve a patients’ health over the long term,” Azar said Tuesday.

A number of payers have increased their MA offerings recently to till the fertile ground set up by CMS, including startups Bright Health and Oscar along with heftier players like Centene and UnitedHealthcare.

Currently, MA plans enroll more than one-third of all Medicare beneficiaries, and enrollment is rising steadily every year. At least 40% of those plans offered non-medical benefits in the current plan year at no additional cost to beneficiaries, according to consultancy Avalere.

But further flexibility could present a problem for payers already struggling to assimilate to the increased flexibility and the administrative burden it entails.

Not enough time, money or guidance

Though it approved of the flexible benefit options, payer lobby America’s Health Insurance Plans was concerned in April about the regulatory changes coming just two months before the submission deadline for plan offerings for the 2020 plan year.

That’s because shaping a new benefit can take two to three years, Robert Saunders, research director at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, told Healthcare Dive. Plans have to work with their actuaries to price what a potential benefit is worth and then incorporate that into their bid.

“Just because you have policy flexibility doesn’t mean you can just now, tomorrow, offer new services,” Saunders said.

While the April rule also increased MA payment rates by 2.5% in 2019 (and rates are expected to hike another 1.6% for 2020), payers also have only a finite amount of funds they can pay back toward medical care. Medicare reimburses MA plans a fixed amount each month, so to provide auxiliary benefits payers have to trim down in other areas.

“If you’re paying for groceries, what else is getting cut?” Jennifer Callahan, executive director of MA product strategy and implementation for Aetna, said. “Is groceries more important than dental coverage? We don’t know.”

Under the CMS regulatory guidance, MA organizations can only develop and offer non-traditional medical benefits if they have a reasonable expectation the services will boost health. That has injected a lot of confusion into the system for payers that may not know what that means, how to measure it and whether they’ll be penalized for slipping up.

“Health plans, especially the small ones, are still looking for clarification on what’s actually allowed,” Nick Johnson, principal at actuarial and consulting firm Milliman, said. Smaller payers often don’t have a large enough sample size to draw conclusions about the positives and negatives of offering specific supplemental benefits, especially in light of substandard quality measures issued from CMS.

A subset of the expanded nonmedical benefits that address social determinants of health factors are officially called “Special Supplemental Benefits for the Chronically Ill” (SSBCI) and can only be offered to an “eligible chronically ill enrollee”: those who have at least one chronic condition and a high risk of hospitalization or adverse health outcomes and require coordinated care.

MA plans can currently offer nonmedical benefits to enrollees for a limited duration of time — typically four weeks, a CMS spokesperson told Healthcare Dive. But only under SSBCI can plans provide these benefits over the long term.

That pigeonholes MA plans from providing additional benefits for a wider spectrum of patients — for example, a person recuperating with serious injuries following a fall who can’t go out and get groceries themselves might appreciate getting them delivered.

However, “just because you were perfectly healthy before, you by definition don’t qualify,” Aetna’s Callahan said. “For me that’s one of the biggest gaps.”

More flexibility unlikely to help rural enrollees

Another concern is that the supplemental benefits could potentially exacerbate health disparities, including the divide between services offered in rural versus urban areas. Non-metropolitan markets tend to be highly concentrated, meaning just one or two insurers dominate the space.

MA is no different. In 619 U.S. counties that account for 4% of overall Medicare beneficiaries, no more than 10% of beneficiaries are enrolled in the privately-run Medicare plans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Many of these low-penetration counties are in rural areas, and less competition means less reason to offer diversified, comprehensive coverage.

“At a national level, what we’re seeing is other places in the country where there’s at least one new benefit offered tend to be urban,” Saunders said.

Many of the add-on services require a specialty workforce — for example, at-home caregivers for long-term services and supports or drivers for non-emergency medical transportation. That makes it harder for plans to introduce them in rural areas that may already be suffering from workforce shortages, a lack of primary care physicians or health facilities, experts said.

For non-emergency medical transportation, companies like Uber and Lyft are combating lower use in rural areas with scheduled rides. Larger NEMT brokers will also partner with transportation companies in the community.

But offering supplemental benefits such as NEMT must be profitable for the insurer and its local partners, experts said. Initiatives that don’t yield a strong return on investment will likely be phased out for the next plan year.

“It’s a really difficult space to be in terms of scalability right now,” Callahan said. “It’s going to take some time.”

 

 

 

Kaiser Permanente, American Cancer Society join blood test startup’s $160M funding round

Posted on by • Posted in Biotech, Cancer, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Life Sciences, Venture Capital • Leave a comment

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/kaiser-permanente-american-cancer-society-join-blood-test-startup-s-160m-funding-round.html?oly_enc_id=2893H2397267F7G

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South San Francisco-based biotech company Freenome announced the close of a $160 million funding round, with participation from Kaiser Permanente Ventures, the American Cancer Society’s BrightEdge Ventures and Alphabet’s GV and Verily Life Sciences.

The Series B financing will be used to further develop Freenome’s blood test for early cancer detection. The startup uses an artificial intelligence-powered multiomics platform to analyze routine blood draws for often-missed biomarkers of early-stage cancer. Development of the platform has so far centered on use in detecting colorectal cancer.

Beyond further refinement of the platform, Freenome will also conduct a validation study to be submitted to the FDA and CMS for review and, eventually, expand the test to detect other forms of cancer and disease, according to CEO Gabe Otte.

 

Kentucky’s New Pension Law Marks Unprecedented Reforms

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https://www.governing.com/week-in-finance/gov-kentucky-pension-bevin.html?utm_term=Kentucky%27s%20New%20Pension%20Law%20Marks%20Unprecedented%20Reforms&utm_campaign=Kentucky%27s%20New%20Pension%20Law%20Marks%20Unprecedented%20Reforms&utm_content=email&utm_source=Act-On+Software&utm_medium=email

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin signing a pension relief bill on Wednesday.

Critics say it could weaken the state’s retirement system, which is already the worst-funded in the nation. 

After several failed attempts and a special legislative session, Kentucky — the state with the worst-funded pension system — now has a plan to ease the financial burden that employees’ retirements are taking on quasi-governmental agencies.

In signing the pension reform bill on Wednesday, Republican Gov. Matt Bevin said it provides “much needed financial relief” and “a viable path forward for our mental health agencies, rape crisis centers, local health departments and other community agencies.”

But opponents of the new law warn that the controversial changes could worsen the state pension plan’s already precarious finances.

The bill freezes the pension payments for quasi-governmental institutions for another year, essentially allowing them to pay half of their bill until it significantly increases after 2020. And in an unprecedented move, the law allows those agencies to leave the state’s pension system and pay off their debt, with interest, over the next 30 years; those agencies can also now move employees hired after 2013 out of the state retirement system.

Pension advocates say the new law threatens the solvency of the $2.7 billion Kentucky Retirement System and will likely leave it waiting decades to get the money it’s owed. The state employees’ plan is already one of the worst-funded in the nation, with just 16 percent of the assets it needs to meet its expected liabilities.

Bridget Early, executive director of the National Public Pension Coalition, says the legislation builds on years of state changes that have weakened the system.

“Instead of finding a way to get money into the system, they’ve all focused on benefit cuts,” she says. “That ultimately removed needed contributions.”

The bill was pushed for by presidents of the state’s regional universities, who say that increasing pension costs are squeezing their budgets and forcing them to raise tuition.

A similar bill passed the legislature during the regular session, but it contained extreme conditions that could have led to retirees not getting pension checks. Bevin vetoed it and called a special session to address the issue.

The state’s 118 quasi-governmental agencies can start leaving the Kentucky Retirement System in April. If they do, they have to provide other options for their employees, such as a 401(k) — but they don’t have to continue contributing money toward their retirement.

Most observers expect the law to be challenged in court, most likely by state Attorney General Andy Beshear, a Democrat and frequent Bevin critic who is running against him for governor.

In the meantime, there are eight months, a governor’s election and the better part of a legislative session until agencies are eligible to exit the retirement system. A lot could change.

“They didn’t do anything draconian that starts right now,” says Brian O’Neill, a spokesman for the Kentucky Public Pension Coalition. “There are still opportunities to work on this.”