Category Archives: ACA

How a Medicare Buy-In or Public Option Could Threaten Obamacare

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Insurance Industry, Health Policy, Medicare, Medicare Buy-In, Medicare for All, Pharmaceutical Industry, Public Option • Leave a comment
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Some Democrats are proposing a government alternative to private insurance. But allowing people to choose such a plan may destabilize the A.C.A., some experts say.

It seems a simple enough proposition: Give people the choice to buy into Medicare, the popular federal insurance program for those over 65.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is one of the Democratic presidential contenders who favor this kind of buy-in, often called the public option. They view it as a more gradual, politically pragmatic alternative to the Medicare-for-all proposal championed by Senator Bernie Sanders, which would abolish private health insurance altogether.

A public option, supporters say, is the logical next step in the expansion of access begun under the Affordable Care Act, passed while Mr. Biden was in office. “We have to protect and build on Obamacare,” he said.

But depending on its design, a public option may well threaten the A.C.A. in unexpected ways.

A government plan, even a Medicare buy-in, could shrink the number of customers buying policies on the Obamacare markets, making them less appealing for leading insurers, according to many health insurers, policy analysts and even some Democrats.

In urban markets, “a public option could come in and soak up all of the demand of the A.C.A. market,” said Craig Garthwaite, a health economist at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

And in rural markets, insurers that are now profitable because they are often the only choices may find it difficult to make money if they faced competition from the federal government.

Some insurers could decide that a smaller and uncertain market is not worth their effort.

If the public option program also matched the rates Medicare paid to hospitals and doctors, “I think it would be really hard to compete,” Mr. Garthwaite said. Even leading insurers do not have the leverage to demand lower prices from hospitals and other providers that the government has.

Whether to implement a public option or Medicare buy-in has become a defining question among Democratic presidential candidates and is likely to be a contentious topic at this week’s debates.

On Monday, Senator Kamala Harris took an alternate route, unveiling a plan that would allow private insurers to participate in a Medicare-for-all scheme, akin to their role currently offering private plans under Medicare Advantage.

The recent spate of proposals reprises some of the most difficult questions leading up to the passage of the A.C.A., in many ways a compromise over widely divergent views of the role of the government in ensuring access to care.

After a shaky start, the federal and state Obamacare marketplaces are surprisingly robust, despite repeated attempts by Republicans to weaken them. They provide insurance to 11 million customers, many of whom receive generous federal subsidies to help pay for coverage.

The A.C.A. is now a solidly profitable business for insurers, with several expanding options after earlier threats to leave. For example, Centene, a for-profit insurer, controls about a fifth of the market, offering plans in 20 states. It is expected to bring in roughly $10 billion in revenues this year by selling Obamacare policies.

In spite of stock drops because of investors’ concerns over Medicare-for-all proposals, for-profit health insurers have generally thrived since the law’s passage.

But a buy-in shift in insurance coverage could profoundly unsettle the nation’s private health sector, which makes up almost a fifth of the United States economy. Depending on who is allowed to sign up for the plan, it could also rock the employer-based system that now covers some 160 million Americans.

In a recent ad, Mr. Biden features a woman who wants to keep her current coverage. “I have my own private insurance — I don’t want to lose it,” she said.

A spokesman for Mr. Biden argued that a public option can extend the success of the Affordable Care Act.

“Joe Biden thinks it would be an egregious mistake to undo the A.C.A., and he will stand against anyone — regardless of their party — who tries to do so,” said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Mr. Biden, in an email.

Major insurers and hospital chains, pharmaceutical companies and the American Medical Association have joined forces to try to derail efforts like Medicare-for-all and the public option. Mr. Sanders denounced these powerful interests in a recent speech.

“The debate we are currently having in this campaign and all over this country has nothing to do with health care, but it has everything to do with the greed and profits of the health care industry,” he said.

Other critics of the public option, including Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, argue Democrats’ programs will lead to a “complete government takeover.”

“These proposals are the largest threats to the American health care system,” she said in a speech earlier this month.

Some experts predict that private insurers will adapt, while others warn that the government could wind up taking on the sickest customers with high medical bills, leaving the healthier, profitable ones to private insurers.

It’s uncertain whether hospitals, on the other hand, could thrive under some versions of the public option. If the nation’s 5,300 hospitals were paid at much lower rates by a government plan — rates resembling those of Medicare — they might lose tens of billions of dollars, the industry claims. Some would close.

One variant of the public option — letting people over 50 or 55 buy into Medicare — is often depicted as less drastic than a universal, single-payer program. But this option would also be problematic, experts said.

This consumer demographic is quite valuable to insurers, hospitals and doctors.

Middle-aged and older Americans have become the bedrock of the Obamacare market. Some insurers say this demographic makes up about half of the people enrolled in their A.C.A. plans and, unlike younger people who come and go, is a reliable and profitable source of business for the insurance companies.

The aging-related health issues of people in this group guarantee regular doctor visits for everything from rising blood pressure to diabetes, and they account for a steady stream of lucrative joint replacements and cardiac stent procedures.

The 55-to-64 age group, for example, accounts for 13 percent of the nation’s population, but generates 20 percent of all health care spending, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Health Spending

People age 55–64 are responsible for one fifth of total health spending and account for a sizable share of the private insurance market. People 65 and older are eligible for Medicare and account for one third of total spending.

Several experts said that designing a buy-in program that is compatible with the existing public and private plans could be daunting.

“You’d have to do it carefully,” said Representative Donna Shalala, a Florida Democrat who served as the secretary of health and human services under President Bill Clinton.

Linda Blumberg, a health policy expert at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, agreed. “The idea of Medicare buy-ins was taken very seriously before there was an Affordable Care Act,” she said. “In the context of the A.C.A., it’s a lot more complicated to do that.”

Many dismiss concerns about whether insurers can compete.

“Any time a market shrinks in America, insurers don’t like it,” said Andy Slavitt, the former acting Medicare administrator under President Obama and a former insurance executive. Mr. Slavitt noted that insurers raised similar concerns about the federal law when it was introduced. “They’ll figure it out,” he said.

In Los Angeles County, five private insurers that sell insurance in the A.C.A. market already compete with L.A. Care Health Plan, which views itself as a kind of public option, said John Baackes, the plan’s chief executive.

The insurer offers the least expensive H.M.O. plan in the county by paying roughly Medicare rates. “We’ve proved that the public option can be healthy competition,” he said.

But the major insurance companies, which were instrumental in defeating the public option when Congress first considered making it a feature of the A.C.A., are already flexing their lobbying muscle and waging public campaigns.

In Connecticut, fierce lobbying by health insurers helped kill a state version of the public option this spring. Cigna resisted passage of the bill, threatening to leave the state. “The proposal design was ill-conceived and simply did not work,” the company said in a statement.

Blue Cross plans could lose 60 percent of their revenues from the individual market if people over 50 are shifted to Medicare, said Kris Haltmeyer, an executive with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, citing an analysis the company conducted. He said it might not make sense for plans to stay in the A.C.A. markets.

Siphoning off such a large group of customers could also lead to a 10 percent increase in premiums for the remaining pool of insured people, according to the Blue Cross analysis. More younger people with expensive medical conditions have enrolled than insurers expected, and insurers would have to increase premiums to cover their costs, Mr. Haltmeyer said.

Tricia Neuman, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies insurance markets, said a government buy-in that attracted older Americans could indeed raise premiums for those who remained in the A.C.A. markets, especially if those consumers had high medical costs.

But some experts countered that prognosis, predicting that premiums could go down if older Americans, whose health care costs are generally expensive, moved into a Medicare-like program.

“The insurance companies are wrong about opposing the public option,” Ms. Shalala said.

Dr. David Blumenthal, the president of the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that funds health care research, said a government plan that attracted people with expensive conditions could prove costly.

“You might, as a taxpayer, become concerned that they would be more like high-risk pools,” he said.

Jonathan Gruber, an M.I.T. economist who advised the Obama administration during the development of the A.C.A., likes Mr. Biden’s plan and argues there is a way to design a public option that does not shut out the private insurers.

“It’s all about threading the needle of making a public option that helps the failing system and not making the doctors and insurers go to the mat,” he said.

Many experts point to private Medicare Advantage plans, which now cover one-third of those eligible for Medicare, as proof that private insurers can coexist with the government.

But the real value of a public option, some say, would stem from the pressure to lower prices for medical care as insurers were forced to compete with the lower-paying government plans, like Medicare.

Washington State recently passed the country’s first public option, capping prices as part of its plan to provide a public alternative to all residents by 2021.

“It’s couched in this language in expanding coverage, but it does it by regulating prices,” said Sabrina Corlette, a health policy researcher at Georgetown University.

The hospital industry would most likely fight just as hard to defeat any proposal that would convert a profitable group of customers, Americans who are privately covered at present, into Medicare beneficiaries.

Private insurers often pay hospitals double or triple what Medicare pays them, according to a recent study from the nonprofit Rand Corporation.

While Ms. Shalala supports a public option as an alternative to “Medicare for All,” she is clear about how challenging it will be to preserve both Obamacare and the private insurance market. “You can’t do it off the top of your head,” she said.

 

No partial Medicaid expansions

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Health Policy, Medicaid, Medicaid Block Grants, Medicaid Expansion • Leave a comment

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-vitals-a4051909-429f-4b4c-a88b-22051b431ef7.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosvitals&stream=top

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The Trump administration made a very big decision over the weekend: It won’t approve full federal funding for a partial Medicaid expansion.

Why it matters: The partial expansion had looked like a key weapon in red states’ continued resistance to the ACA. Without it, Medicaid enrollment likely will keep growing.

Between the lines: Although the reasoning is different, the Trump administration is now adopting the same policy as the Obama administration — a decision many experts believe the law compels.

Details: Utah voters approved the full ACA expansion last year, but the state legislature overruled them to pass a more limited version.

  • Utah believed that the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services would approve full federal funding even for the partial expansion, which prompted other red states to explore the same idea.

The intrigue: While the Obama administration rejected these requests on the grounds that federal law dictates the terms of a Medicaid expansion, the Trump administration went a different route, per the Washington Post.

  • “White House advisers argued that it did not make sense to approve generous federal funding under the ACA while the administration is arguing that the entire law should be overturned,” the Post reports.

The bottom line: Utah has a backup plan in place — the full Medicaid expansion that Utah residents voted for in the first place.

  • Partial expansion was mainly attractive to red states facing pressure to expand but had leaders who didn’t want to. With that option off the table, don’t be surprised if more states end up just going along with the expansion.

 

 

 

 

Red states’ Medicaid gamble: Paying more to cover fewer people

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Block Grants, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Health Policy, Medicaid, Medicaid Block Grants, Medicaid Expansion • Leave a comment

https://www.axios.com/republicans-medicaid-affordable-care-act-expensive-d7057a8e-0a55-4f0d-906e-e42aa3f00ba9.html

Illustration of a price tag hanging from an IV stand

Red states are getting creative as they look for new ways to limit the growth of Medicaid. But in the process those states are taking legal, political and practical risks that could ultimately leave them paying far more, to cover far fewer people.

Why it matters: Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program cover more than 72 million Americans, thanks in part to the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. Rolling back the program is a high priority for the Trump administration, and it needs states’ help to get there.

The big picture: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, under the leadership of Administrator Seema Verma, has made clear that it wants to say “yes” to new limits on Medicaid eligibility, and has invited states to ask for those limits.

  • But CMS hasn’t actually said “yes” yet to some of the most significant limits states have asked for.
  • In the meantime, states are left either with vague ambitions they’re not sure how to implement, or with risky plans that put their own budgets on the line.

What we’re watching: State-level Republicans are waiting for CMS to resolve two related issues: how much federal funding their versions of Medicaid can receive, and the extent to which they’re able to cap enrollment in the program.

  • “These issues are going to continue to be intertwined,” said Joan Alker, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

Verma has reportedly told state officials that she wants to use her regulatory power to convert Medicaid funding into a system of block grants — which would be an enormous rightward shift and probably a big cut in total funding.

  • CMS probably cannot do that on its own, experts said, but it could achieve something similar by approving caps on either enrollment or spending.

Where it stands: GOP lawmakers in a handful of states are looking to Utah, which has bet big on Verma’s authority, for signals about what’s possible.

  • Utah voters approved the full ACA expansion last year, but the state legislature overruled them to pass a more limited version.
  • By foregoing the full expansion, Utah passed up enhanced federal funding. It’s still asking for that extra money — a request CMS has never previously approved.
  • Utah will also ask CMS to impose a per-person cap on Medicaid spending — a steep cut that was part of congressional Republicans’ failed repeal-and-replace bill, and which may strain CMS’ legal authority.
  • If Utah doesn’t get those two requests, its backup plan is simply to adopt the full expansion.

What’s next: Utah is not the only red state leaning into Verma’s agenda, but it’s further out on a limb than any other.

  • Idaho, like Utah, overruled its voters to pass a narrower Medicaid bill. But it preserved an option for people to buy into the ACA’s expansion.
  • Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has said he wants to take Verma up on her offer of block grants; so have legislators in Tennessee and Georgia. But in the absence of any detail about what that means, or what CMS will approve, that’s all pretty vague right now.

If CMS does move forward on any of this, it could face the same threat of lawsuits that have stymied its first big Medicaid overhaul — work requirements.

  • Those rules are on ice in two states because a judge said they contravene Medicaid’s statutory structure and goals. The same argument could await a partial expansion or tough spending caps.

“There’s a clear agenda here to get a handful of states to take up these waivers, which fundamentally undermine the central tenets of the Medicaid program — which [are] that it is a guarantee of coverage, and a guarantee of federal funding,” Alker said.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Governors Weigh Health Care Plans as They Await Court Ruling

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Single Payer Health System, Single Payer Healthcare System, Universal Healthcare System • Leave a comment

https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2019-07-25/governors-weigh-health-care-plans-as-they-await-court-ruling

The Associated Press

As they gather at a conference in Utah, governors from around the country are starting to think about what they would do if an appeals court upholds a lower court ruling overturning President Obama’s signature health care law.

More than 20 million Americans would be at risk of losing their health insurance if the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agrees with a Texas-based federal judge who declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional last December because Congress had eliminated an unpopular tax it imposed on people who did not buy insurance.

The final word on striking down law will almost certainly come from the Supreme Court, which has twice upheld the 2010 legislation.

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, signed a bill earlier this year prohibiting health insurers from denying coverage to patients due to pre-existing conditions, a pre-emptive move in case the Affordable Care Act were struck down.

He said this week in Salt Lake City at the summer meeting of the National Governors Association that he would ask his recently created patient protection commission to come up with recommendations for how to ensure patients don’t lose coverage if the law is overturned, which would impact about 200,000 people enrolled in Medicaid expansion in Nevada.

“To rip that away from them would be devastating to a lot of families,” Sisolak said.

Nevada is among a coalition of 20 Democratic-leaning states led by California that appealed the lower court ruling and is urging the appeals court to keep the law intact.

At a news conference Thursday, Democrats touted the protections they’ve passed to prevent people from losing health coverage.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed laws this year that enshrine provisions of the Affordable Care Act into state law, including guarantees to insurance coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions and access to contraception without cost-sharing. She said half of the state’s residents use Medicaid, prompting New Mexico officials to research creating a state-based health care system.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said his state is already deep in contingency planning because five million people could lose health insurance if the law is struck down and the state doesn’t have enough money to make up for the loss of federal funds. He said the decision this year to tax people who don’t have health insurance, a revival of the so-called individual mandate stripped from Obama’s model, was the first step. That tax will help pay for an expansion of the state’s Medicaid program, the joint state and federal health insurance program for the poor and disabled.

Newsom said the state is looking at Massachusetts‘ state-run health care program and investigating if a single-payer model would work as possible options if the law is spiked.

“The magnitude is jaw-dropping,” Newsom said. “You can’t sit back passively and react to it.”

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, said states need Congress to be ready to quickly pass a new health care plan if the court overturns Obama’s law, since doing so would cut off federal funding for Medicaid expansion.

A court decision in March blocked Arkansas from enforcing work requirements for its Medicaid expansion program, which has generated seemingly annual debate in that state’s Legislature about whether to continue the program.

“Congress can’t just leave that out there hanging,” Hutchinson said.

The 2018 lawsuit that triggered the latest legal battle over the Affordable Care Act was filed by a coalition of 18 Republican-leaning states including Arkansas, Arizona and Utah.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, said he wants to see how the court rules before he makes any decisions about how his state would deal with the loss of Medicaid funds but that Arizona has backup funds available.

“They’re going to rule how they’re going to rule and we’ll deal with the outcome,” Ducey said. “The best plans are to have dollars available.”

It is unknown when the three-judge panel will rule.

The government said in March that 11.4 million people signed up for health care via provisions of the Affordable Care Act during open enrollment season, a dip of about 300,000 from last year.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, said if the law is overturned, it would provide a perfect opportunity for Congress to try to craft a better program with support from both political parties.

He said his state, which rolled out its partial Medicaid expansion in April, probably will not start working on a contingency plan for people who would lose coverage until the appeals court rules.

“It’s been talked about for so long, people are saying ‘Why worry about it until it happens?'” Herbert said. “I think there’s a little bit more of a lackadaisical thought process going on.”

President Donald Trump, who never produced a health insurance plan to replace Obama’s health care plan, is now promising one after the elections.

Newsom warned Americans not to rely on that.

“God knows they have no capacity to deal with that,” Newsom said. “The consequences would be profound and pronounced.”

 

 

Judge upholds short-term plan expansion in Trump win against ACA

Posted on by • Posted in ACA, Essential Health Benefits, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Insurance Industry, Health Policy, Short Term Health Insurance • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/judge-upholds-short-term-plan-expansion-in-trump-win-against-aca/559146/

Dive Brief:

  • A district judge ruled in favor of a controversial Trump administration policy expanding the sale of short-term health insurance Friday, advancing conservative efforts to weaken the Affordable Care Act.
  • Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected plaintiffs’ claims that the limited coverage unlawfully undermines the ACA, basing his decision partly on the elimination of the individual mandate tax penalty in 2017.
  • The plaintiffs, including the Association for Community Affiliated Plans, the National Alliance on Mental Illness and AIDS United, plan to appeal the decision, with ACAP CEO Margaret Murray slamming the policy as “arbitrary and capricious” in a statement following the ruling.

Dive Insight:

Originally intended as stopgap coverage while consumers transition between insurance plans, the Obama administration limited short-term health plans to three months. In a rule that took effect Oct. 2, the Trump administration expanded the length of the coverage to 12 months, renewable for up to three years.

Like many other Trump administration healthcare policies, that led to a lawsuit.

The plaintiffs had a hard skeptic in Leon, who seemed unmoved by their arguments in the case in late May. In a position backed up by outside research, the group maintained Trump’s expansion of the short-term health plans could lure healthier Americans away from the ACA exchanges, weakening the risk pool and raising premiums across the board.

Legal representation for the administration countered there was consumer demand for insurance more inexpensive than that offered through the ACA marketplace, and that there was no evidence the plans were attracting healthier people away.

“To be sure, the ACA’s various reforms are interdependent and were designed to work together as features of the individual exchange markets,” Leon wrote in his decision. “However, Congress clearly did not intend for the law to apply to all species of individual health insurance.”

It’s been a busy week for the judge. Leon is also overseeing the beleaguered CVS-Aetna settlement pact and will hear oral arguments on the merger Friday afternoon.

Despite Republican lawmakers’ highly public failure to repeal the ACA in 2017 and GOP attempts to declare the ACA unconstitutional in a case now in front of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the party is trying to rebrand itself as the party of healthcare going into the 2020 presidential election.

The limited coverage options, often decried as “junk plans” by critics, aren’t required to cover the 10 essential health benefits protected under the ACA or to cover pre-existing conditions. They also don’t have to pay out at least 80% of premium dollars to fund medical and preventive care.

In March, the House Energy and Commerce Committee launched an investigation into the marketing and business practices of the plans. Leading Democrats, led by Frank Pallone, D-N.J., requested documents and information from 12 companies that either sell, market or help consumers in purchasing the limited coverage, including market giants Anthem and UnitedHealth Group.

In many cases, consumers may not be aware they’re being peddled bare-bones coverage. Tampa, Florida-based Health Insurance Innovations is currently being sued by two policyholders that were left with tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills for care they thought was covered under their short-term plans.

Other attempts by the Trump administration to undermine the ACA have hit legal roadblocks.

In March, another federal judge struck down its attempt to allow small businesses to join together to create association health plans exempt from ACA rules, slamming it as an “end run” around the law.

The same month, another judge rejected Medicaid work requirements in Kentucky and Arkansas requiring low-income Americans to meet stringent work or education benchmarks to receive coverage under the program.

Shares of companies that sell short-term plans, including Health Insurance Innovations, spiked following news of the decision Friday.

 

 

 

Medicaid should be a bigger part of the “Medicare for All” debate

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Medicaid, Medicare, Medicare for All • Leave a comment

https://www.axios.com/medicare-for-all-bernie-sanders-medicaid-states-b3c5eceb-0f3c-4c4b-9317-6a1f9434232b.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosvitals&stream=top

Illustration of a pills capsule opening with state-shaped pills falling out

The fact that “Medicare for All” would eliminate Medicaid hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as its elimination of private insurance. But it’s a move that would largely eliminate states’ role in the health care system.

Why it matters: State Medicaid programs are leaders in experimenting with delivery and payment reforms, efforts to control drug costs, and addressing social causes of ill health, such as poverty and poor housing. All of those projects would still be important in a single-payer world.

How it works: Sen. Bernie Sanders’ bill would move most Americans into its new single-payer system, including people with private insurance but also virtually all of the 73 million people covered by Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Winners: States would reap huge savings. Medicaid is the single largest item in most state budgets.

  • The effects on safety-net hospitals and clinics would vary, depending largely on how payment rates under the new plan compare to today’s Medicaid rates.
  • The uninsured in states that have not expanded Medicaid also would be big winners.

Yes, but: The change would all but eliminate states’ role in health care, where they have been leaders not just in providing coverage, but also driving efficiency and testing new models of care.

  • Those reforms — and the idea of states as laboratories of reform — would pretty much disappear, and the balance of federalism in health would fundamentally change.

The bottom line: For advocates of a single national plan, eliminating the patchwork of state Medicaid programs would be progress. For fans of a federal-state balance, it’s a big problem.

  • Either way, Medicaid is a large and generally popular program, and its future at least deserves a bigger role in the debate.

 

 

 

Family of four faces $25,000 in average annual unsubsidized ACA costs in 2019

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Essential Health Benefits, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, High Deductible Health Plans, Out of Pocket Expenses, Preexisting Conditions, Underinsured, Uninsured • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/families-four-face-25000-average-annual-unsubsidized-aca-costs-2019?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTjJVNE9HTm1OelEwTlRkaiIsInQiOiJsaDZIK0JaczhmMFBzWElmSDluT1VROHc3ckM2azFCZ0NvUnR2U2NmYlRIa2VnYkw2dnR1NmJEMnFrcEFVZUVVSEpVTjlBcXkxaXZaSFFlUFR6djBvRjBTM2NpRFFQMXBDQkRVaFpQSEVtMVFTRlNqUTRBaUxTUmg2MnNrVXFiYiJ9

Costs for two- and four-person families rose despite overall premiums being relatively flat compared to last year.

Average 2019 health insurance premiums are $1,403 per month for families of four who don’t qualify for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, according to a report released today by eHealth.

The 2019 Health Insurance Index Report analyzes costs and trends among unsubsidized consumers who purchased individual and family coverage for the 2019 plan year at eHealth during the ACA’s most recent open enrollment period. eHealth, Inc. dba as eHealthInsurance, is a private online marketplace for health insurance.

The data and research is focused on ACA market consumers who earn too much per year to qualify for government subsidies that help to reduce what they spend on insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs. The new report is based on individual and family health insurance applications submitted by unsubsidized eHealth consumers between November 1 and December 15, 2018.

WHAT’S THE IMPACT

While overall premiums were relatively flat compared to the 2018 open enrollment period, costs for two- and four-person families hit a couple of new milestones.

The first is that total combined annual premiums plus deductibles for a four-person family topped $25,000 for 2019. The second is that average premiums for two-person families broke $1,000 per month for the first time this year.

Deductibles marked their first significant decline since 2014, when the ACA took effect. he average individual deductible decreased 6% for 2019, while the average family deductible decreased 8%.

Plan selection trends for 2019 show that HMO plans continue to dominate the market, representing 56% of all plan selections, the same as in 2018.

Meanwhile, exclusive provider organization, or EPO plans reach 26% of all plan selections, up from 20% in 2018; and silver plans reach 35% of all plan selections, up from 30% over last year.

THE LARGER TREND

An estimated 87% of Healthcare.gov customers received subsidies. Their premium cost after subsidies is $87 a month, according to the report. But costs borne by the unsubsidized are significantly greater. At eHealth during the fourth quarter of 2018, which included the ACA’s 2019 open enrollment period, 64% of applications were for consumers purchasing ACA-compliant plans not eligible for use with subsidies.

Premiums for those with employer-sponsored health insurance plans have also been on the rise.

Between 2008 and 2018, such premiums increased 55 percent — twice as fast as workers’ earnings, according to a June report from Kaiser Family Foundation. And since 2006, the average health insurance deductible for covered workers soared by more than 200 percent — from an inflation-adjusted average of $379 to more than $1,300 today.

 

The Battle for Health Care

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Essential Health Benefits, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, High Deductible Health Plans, Individual Mandate, Out of Pocket Expenses, Preexisting Conditions, Supreme Court, Underinsured, Uninsured • Leave a comment

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/comment/the-health-care-defense?reload=true

The Battle for Health Care

The latest Republican effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act appears likely to reach the Supreme Court in the heat of the 2020 Presidential race.

One of the central questions of the 2020 Presidential campaign was posed last week before the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, to a lawyer for the Trump Administration, who didn’t even pretend to have an answer. A three-judge panel was hearing the appeal of a ruling by Reed O’Connor, a Texas district-court judge, that the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was unconstitutional in its entirety—an opinion that the Administration has endorsed. O’Connor had ordered that the government cease implementing or enforcing all aspects of the A.C.A., including its protections for people with preëxisting conditions, its ban on lifetime caps, its expansion of Medicaid and coverage for young adults on their parents’ plan, and its support for the treatment of addiction. The order could cost tens of millions of people all or much of their coverage, and throw the health-care system, which accounts for a fifth of the economy, into chaos. But O’Connor, in what Judge Jennifer Elrod, of the Fifth Circuit, described with no apparent irony as a “modest” act, had stayed his own order, pending appeals. Here, now, was the first appeal. So, if the stay is lifted, Elrod asked, “What’s the government planning to do?”

As the lawyer, August Flentje, struggled to answer (“This is a very complicated program—multifaceted, obviously”), it became clear that Republican opposition to the A.C.A. remains a project of blind destruction. One of President Trump’s few health-care initiatives, on drug prices, fell into disarray last week, with one measure defeated in court and another abandoned. Otherwise, he has mostly complained that Democrats want to extend care to, among others, undocumented people. His almost pathological need to undo President Obama’s legacy can be added to the mix; the restraint sometimes said to characterize conservatism can be subtracted. And there is a growing conviction among the A.C.A.’s opponents that the current Supreme Court, given the addition of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, will back them up.

They may be right; the threat that this case, Texas et al. v. United States, presents to Obamacare should not be underestimated, especially as it is likely to reach the Court in the heat of the 2020 campaign. The case was brought by twenty states whose most distinct common quality is their redness. Maine and Wisconsin dropped out of the suit after the 2018 midterm elections, when their Republican governors were replaced by Democrats. When the Trump Administration declined to defend the law, a group of mostly blue states—currently twenty-one—got permission from the district court to do so. They were joined by a lawyer for the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. When Kurt Engelhardt, another of the appeals judges, pointedly asked that lawyer why the Senate hadn’t sent someone to defend the law, he replied that the Senate “operates differently.” It is, after all, led by Mitch McConnell, not Nancy Pelosi.

The complaint concerns the so-called “individual mandate.” When the A.C.A. was enacted, in 2010, it directed every American to get insurance or face a penalty, which was calculated on a sliding scale (and dropped altogether for low-income people; other groups, such as prisoners, were exempt). The constitutionality of the mandate was the subject of an earlier challenge to the A.C.A., but Chief Justice John Roberts wrote an opinion classifying the penalty as a tax, which Congress has the power to levy. Trump’s 2017 tax package, however, reduced the penalty to zero. For the A.C.A.’s opponents, this led to a wild surmise: if the mandate had survived because the penalty was a tax, the absence of a tax might make the mandate unconstitutional. That point might seem academic—constitutional or not, the mandate is, for all practical purposes, already gone, now that there is no penalty for ignoring it. But Texas et al. makes a far more radical claim: The phantom mandate is not only unconstitutional but “inseverable” from the rest of the law. If it is invalid, then all nine hundred and six pages of Obamacare are also invalid.

This argument is as senseless as it is ruinous. It’s like saying that the 2017 tax bill was a stealth total repeal of the A.C.A., something that even leading Republicans denied at the time. And yet at least two of the judges, Elrod and Engelhardt, appeared inclined to accept it. The main issue for them seemed to be just how much of Obamacare to trash.

On that question, too, the Administration has been erratic. Initially, it argued that the court should invalidate only certain provisions, such as preëxisting-condition protections—a major feature that Trump has elsewhere claimed to like. Then, in March, the Administration said that it agreed with the Texas ruling: burn it all. Two months later, though, it argued that, while every word of the law was invalid, any relief that the lower court granted should be limited to damages suffered by Texas and the other states, without defining what those damages might be. This led to utter confusion in the oral arguments: Would there be different versions of the law for different states? Which provisions might the government want to keep? (“You would leave in place the calorie guides?” Judge Elrod asked.) Flentje, the Justice Department’s lawyer, told Elrod that, really, “things don’t need to get sorted out until there’s a final ruling”—that is, from the Supreme Court.

Obamacare has reduced the number of uninsured Americans by twenty million and, while the system is imperfect, premiums are more manageable than is often reported. But, as the Texas case suggests, it can still all be undone. And there is much more to do; the United States has not achieved universal coverage. All the Democratic Presidential front-runners share that goal, but they have what are sometimes sharply diverging proposals for getting there. Vice-President Joseph Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, of South Bend, and former Representative Beto O’Rourke, of El Paso, want to build on the A.C.A. and make Medicare available to all as a public option, alongside private insurance. Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, has a Medicare for All bill that aims to displace private insurance, and in most cases make it unlawful, leaving a public option as the only real option. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris have signed on to Sanders’s plan, although Harris has at times tried to downplay the impact on private insurance.

The next Democratic debates, which will be held on July 30th and 31st, may sharpen the candidates’ positions or further polarize them. The Democrats need a plan to protect Americans’ health coverage. And they need a plan to win in 2020. Those might even be the same thing. ♦

 

Appeals Court Upholds Decision Barring Trump Birth-Control Exemptions

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Health Policy • Leave a comment

https://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals-court-upholds-decision-barring-trump-birth-control-exemptions-11562973913

Ruling finds employers can’t withhold contraception coverage, in fresh blow to administration’s deregulatory push

A federal appeals court unanimously upheld a lower court decision blocking a revised set of Trump administration rules allowing employers with religious or moral objections to opt out of providing their workers with birth-control coverage.

The ruling late Friday by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals is a blow to the administration, which had prioritized weakening an Obama-era mandate requiring employers to offer free contraceptive health coverage to their employees—a top concern for Catholic and antiabortion groups. The court’s decision, which applies nationwide, makes it much less likely that the administration will be able to fashion an exemption acceptable to the courts.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately return a request for comment. The agency is expected to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration’s rules, issued in November by the DHHS, would have exempted a broad swath of employers from the mandate contained in the Affordable Care Act. Those rules represented a second attempt by Trump officials to create such an exemption, after a first set was blocked in 2017.

Judge Patty Schwartz, writing for the court, said the Affordable Care Act plainly states women must be provided preventive health services. “Nowhere in the enabling statute did Congress grant the agency the authority to exempt entities from providing insurance coverage for such services,” she wrote.

That makes birth control another realm in which courts have halted the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. The administration has lost more than 90% of lawsuits brought over its deregulation efforts, according to New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

“Yet another court has stopped this administration from sanctioning discrimination under the guise of religion or morality,” said Louise Melling, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Obama administration issued the birth-control mandate in 2011 as part of its broader implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

In response to court challenges by some Catholic employers that object on religious grounds to most forms of birth control—along with other religious employers with specific objections to emergency contraception—Obama health officials created a workaround allowing female workers whose employers objected to covering contraception to obtain it directly from insurers.

Religiously affiliated employers, however, considered that insufficient because the insurance plans they sponsored were still being used as a vehicle for providing birth-control coverage.

The Trump administration’s changes sought to exempt them from the requirement completely. The administration also added moral objections to religious ones as grounds for an exemption.