Category Archives: Health Policy

From Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders, here’s how much every 2020 presidential candidate has gotten from the healthcare industry

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Conflicts of Interest, Health Policy • Leave a comment

https://www.businessinsider.com/healthcare-donations-to-2020-presidential-candidates-2019-7

Healthcare companies donate to 2020 presidential candidates Yutong Yuan/Business Insider
  • Healthcare has becomes a prominent part of the 2020 presidential campaign, and the healthcare industry’s donations to candidates have come under scrutiny.
  • Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has said he won’t take funds from drugmakers and health insurers and called on other candidates to follow.
  • The healthcare sector, which includes drugmakers, health insurers, doctors, and hospitals, has contributed more than $5 million so far towards the many presidential candidates, according to data from OpenSecrets through the end of June.
  • President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign was a top recipient of healthcare dollars, and Sanders’ campaign ranked in the top five. Read on to see how much every candidate received.

Healthcare is a major issue in the upcoming 2020 presidential election.

It’s also become a flashpoint when it comes to presidential campaign contributions, with longtime Vermont Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders saying he won’t take donations from the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries and calling on other candidates to follow.

So far, the healthcare sector has contributed more than $5 million in total towards the many presidential candidates, from President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign all the way to his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor William Weld, according to new data from the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics’s OpenSecrets covering the campaign season through the end of June.

With nearly 30 Democratic contenders gearing up to face off against President Donald Trump, many have said that expanding access to health coverage should be a priority — and some, like Sanders, have pushed for a bigger overhaul of the US healthcare system advocating “ Medicare for All.”

Sanders has said he won’t take funds from the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries in pursuit of that goal.

The presidential candidate put out a No Health Insurance and Pharma Money Pledge that bars “knowingly” taking contributions of more than $200 from political action committees, lobbyists and executives of drugmakers like Merck and Novartis and health insurers like Cigna and Kaiser Permanente. But it does not extend to the average employee. The pledge also does not apply to other healthcare sectors like hospitals.

The stance represents a departure from the 2016 election, when Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Trump both blasted the pharmaceutical industry and its high drug prices, while still taking campaign donations.

Read on to see how much the 2020 candidates have brought in from the health sector so far. We reached out to every campaign for comment, and included responses below if we received them.

The data from OpenSecrets includes contributions from employees at hospitals, health insurers and makers of drugs and medical supplies, as well as professionals like dentists and nurses as part of the healthcare sector.

OpenSecrets doesn’t yet have data on Tom Steyer and Joe Sestak, who declared their candidacies more recently. Mike Gravel’s contributions aren’t included because they’re largely small and not categorized, OpenSecrets said.

 

 

 

Hospital association: Wage index rule positive, but uncompensated care needs work

Posted on by • Posted in Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Medicare, Medicare Wage Index, Uncompensated Care • Leave a comment

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/health-pulse/hospital-association-wage-index-rule-positive-uncompensated-care-needs-work?utm_source=health-pulse-tuesday&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190805&utm_content=hero-readmore

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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Friday unveiled its final rule on Medicare payment policies for hospitals under the inpatient prospective payment system for fiscal 2020. Though the Greater New York Hospital Association sees modifications to the agency’s proposal to address area wage index disparities as a boon, it’s not pleased with the outcome when it comes to uncompensated care.

“On a positive note, CMS modified its proposal to address wage index disparities between low and high wage index areas and will apply a uniform national budget neutrality factor to all hospitals instead of cutting only high wage area hospitals,” wrote Kenneth Raske, president and CEO of the association, in a letter to members.

The area wage index applies to the reimbursement of hospitals and raises or lowers Medicare payments to account for geographic differences in labor costs.

The final rule is designed to increase the wage index for hospitals with a value below the 25th percentile. Specifically, it will increase those hospitals’ wage indexes by half the difference between the otherwise applicable value for a hospital and the 25th percentile value across all hospitals. And there will be a 5% cap on any decrease in a hospital’s wage index from its final wage index for fiscal 2019 to mitigate significant decreases.

CMS’ previous proposal would have targeted only high wage index hospitals—such as those in New York—to address disparities. The modified provision will cost New York hospitals about $26 million, including fee–for–service and managed-care payments, less than half of what the original proposal would have cost them, a spokesman for the Greater New York Hospital Association said. Nationwide, the proposal will cost about $330 million.

Before the final rule, the New York congressional delegation took issue with the initial proposal to increase the wage index for hospitals that fall in the lowest 25th percentile of wage areas at the expense of hospitals that are above the 75th percentile of wages.

“CMS argues that its proposed changes to the area wage index seek to help rural hospitals, yet not one of New York’s rural hospitals—who face the same fiscal challenges as rural hospitals across the nation—would see a benefit from the policy,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to CMS administrator Seema Verma. “Rather, states like New York with many hospitals that have legitimately high wages commensurate with market competition will be forced to transfer hundreds of millions in Medicare funding to a small handful of states.”

With the issue of wage index out of the way, state hospitals’ greatest concern may now be the finalized uncompensated care pool proposal. Raske noted the Greater New York Hospital Association has “fiercely opposed” the proposal.

“To mitigate the impact of the data issues and reduce the volatility in the uncompensated care distributions, GNYHA had recommended that CMS continue the fiscal year 2019 policy and base the distribution on a weighted average of low-income days and uncompensated care costs,” Raske wrote. “Instead, CMS finalized its proposal to base the distribution on 100% uncompensated care costs using 2015 data.”

In March the Greater New York Hospital Association called the proposal dangerous and said it would base distributions on bad debt and charity care data and cap the pool’s rate of growth, representing a $98 billion cut over 10 years. —Jennifer Henderson

 

 

 

 

America’s mental health problem isn’t mass shootings

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Insurance Industry, Health Policy, High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, Mental Health, Underinsured, Uninsured, Violence • Leave a comment

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/pdf/10.1377/hlthaff.2013.0085

illustration of guns

The U.S. has a gun violence problem and a mental health problem. But conflating the two won’t solve either.

The big picture: The average person suffering from a mental illness is no more prone to violence than anyone without a mental illness, and mental-health advocates say exaggerating a link between mass shootings and mental illness can be stigmatizing and harmful.

Between the lines: “A very small proportion of people with a mental illness are at increased risk of violent behavior if they are not treated,” 2 former CEOs of Mental Health America wrote in Health Affairs in 2013.

  • These are the people with the most severe mental illnesses — often those characterized by paranoia and delusions, the authors added. These people also may have a substance abuse problem or a “history of victimization.”

Yes, but: Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides, and “mental illness is a very strong causal factor in suicide,” Duke University’s Jeffrey Swanson said.

Even if Congress did decide to further limit people with mental illness’ access to guns, they’ll quickly run up against the mental health system’s broader shortcomings.

  • A patient must interact with the system to receive a mental health diagnosis. And one of the system’s biggest problems is that many people with mental illness can’t get the treatment they need.
  • Only 25% of active shooters included in an analysis released by the FBI last year had ever been diagnosed with a mental illness, even though 62% had appeared to be struggling with some kind of mental health issue in the year before the attack.
  • “The act of somebody who goes out and massacres a bunch of strangers, that’s not the act of a healthy mind,” Swanson said. “But that doesn’t mean that person has a mental illness.”

 

 

 

 

Lowering Out-of-Pocket Health Costs Isn’t Easy. States Have Tried

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Cost Management, Cost Reduction, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Medicaid, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pharmaceutical Industry, Price Transparency, Private Interest Groups, Reinsurance, Rev Cycle Management, Surprise Bills • Leave a comment

https://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/gov-trump-prescription-drug-prices-states-canada-import.html?utm_term=Lowering%20Out-of-Pocket%20Health%20Costs%20Isn%27t%20Easy.%20States%20Have%20Tried.&utm_campaign=Lowering%20Out-of-Pocket%20Health%20Costs%20Isn%27t%20Easy.%20States%20Have%20Tried.%20Now%20Congress%20Is%20Giving%20It%20a%20Shot.&utm_content=email&utm_source=Act-On+Software&utm_medium=email

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy shows a chart during a congressional hearing.

Congress has promised to tackle high consumer health-care costs this year. It’s one of the few issues where lawmakers on both sides of the aisle find common ground.

The Lower Health Care Costs Act, introduced in June, is an almost 200-page piece of legislation that seeks to prevent surprise medical bills, lower prescription drug prices and force hospitals to be more transparent about what they bill insurance companies.

But there are already signs of potential failure.

Despite early momentum, Congressional leaders postponed a vote on the measure until after August recess. The pharmaceutical industry as well as hospital and provider groups have started to lobby against the legislation, meeting with President Trump in July to make their case.

Although the Affordable Care Act led to more people having health insurance, many Americans still struggle with out-of-pocket costs, especially ones they weren’t expecting. Meanwhile, health care is taking up an ever-growing size of state budgets. Governors and lawmakers try to tackle this issue almost every legislative session, but few have succeeded in a meaningful way.

“It’s usually a third of state budgets. States have every reason to try and control health-care costs. And yet, everybody struggles to,” says Josh Shaferstein, vice dean of Johns Hopkins University’s Office of Public Health Practice and Training, and a former health secretary for the state of Maryland.

Battling the Health-Care Industry

The first and usually biggest hurdle is private interest groups who see reforms as a threat to their livelihood.

“There are a lot of stakeholders that have vested interest and lobbyists on the ground that will fight tooth and nail, whether it’s doctors and nurses groups or insurance companies. They are perhaps moreso willing to fight at the state level,” says Sabrina Corlette, research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms.

She points to a bill introduced in Colorado this year that would have capped payments to hospitals in order to lower premiums. After pushback from hospital groups, lawmakers amended the legislation — which was signed into law — so that hospitals will be paid the same but will have to pay back a portion of their revenue to help lower premiums. 

In Washington state, which passed a first-in-the-nation “public option” bill this year, lawmakers rewrote the original legislation after doctor and hospital groups fought a provision that would have set the same cap on provider payments as Medicare. The final legislation reflected a compromise for insurers to pay providers 160 percent of Medicare rates.

At least eight other states discussed or introduced public option bills this year, but they failed to gain traction.

In Delaware — a state that ranks third in health-care spending but 31st in health outcomes — Gov. Jay Carney signed an executive order in November that outlines eight goals the state will work toward to curb the growth in health spending. But Kara Odom Walker, the state’s health secretary, concedes that they weren’t able to convince stakeholders to enact new penalties or regulations.

“Being a small state makes it a lot harder to do things that might be unpopular. Any conversation that includes words like ‘penalty’ or ‘payment cap’ is like a bomb going off,” she says.

The health-care industry is one of the biggest in the country. That gives it a lot of leverage.

“The health systems are often the largest employers in town. The governor says they want to slow health-care spending growth, and the hospital group will say, ‘that means losing jobs,’” says Robert Mechanic, executive director of the Health Industry Forum.

But as Congress tries to lower out-of-pocket costs, they have an asset that states don’t: better data. Corlette says states often lack impartial numbers on potential policies, hurting their ability to assess and defend legislation.

“It’s very hard for your average state legislator to pierce the veil,” Corlette says. “There’s an imbalance of info for legislators to really tackle the problem. They don’t have a Congressional Budget Office.”

One Person’s Savings Are Another’s Costs

Many compare efforts to control health-care costs to a game of whack-a-mole. A state might successfully regulate spending in one area only to see costs skyrocket in another.

“You might be able to cut rates in Medicaid, but then rates will pop up in private insurance. The standard toolkit for states is fraught with political danger,” says Shaferstein.

“Health care is so complex, and there are so many different players. It’s really hard to get your arm around the whole bundle,” says Mechanic.

For instance, Medicare lowered the limit for how long older patients can stay in hospitals. But there’s some evidence that the Medicare savings became extra costs for nursing homes because hospitals started providing fewer services for elderly patients altogether.

State Legislation

When it comes to controlling drug prices, states haven’t made much progress. They have made more headway regulating surprise medical bills.

Half the states have passed surprise billing laws. Only nine of them, though, included “comprehensive protections” that apply to all insurance plans, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

While states have struggled to actually lower drug prices, like Congress plans to do, they have passed laws to make them more transparent and to clamp down on pharmacy benefit managers — middlemen who negotiate drug benefits for plans.

Five states have enacted laws that require drug companies to notify them if they will significantly raise the price of a drug, and at least a dozen have restricted the power that a pharmacy benefit manager can have, like requiring them to register with the state.

Solutions That Have Worked

There are some success stories and lessons learned that Congress could use to lower health-care spending in general.

“States should be thinking of more global solutions because you kind of have to go big. Oftentimes people are looking to save $1 to $2 million a year, but that’s not going to make much of a difference,” says Shafterstein.

Only a couple of states have “gone big” in this sense.

Massachusetts passed what became the framework for the federal Affordable Care Act in 2006, known as “RomneyCare,” which requires residents to have health insurance. Health-care spending has since slowed in recent years. Mechanic credits that to the law’s requirements for private health entities to publicly justify price hikes and high spending.

In Maryland, it has taken decades to get health-care spending under control. The state has had an all-payer system for hospitals since the 1970s, meaning they get a fixed sum every month rather than bill insurers for every claim. While that system — which is only used by one other state, Vermont — curbed hospital spending per patient, hospital spending overall grew at a slightly higher rate than the national average.

So in 2014, Maryland forced hospitals to limit their spending to 0.5 percent less than the national growth rate. It has largely been deemed a success, with a report commissioned by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finding that “Maryland hospitals were able to operate within their global budgets without adverse effects on their financial status.”

On a less global scale, states have been able to drive down premiums by implementing reinsurance programs, meaning the government pays for the most expensive patients, taking that bill off insurance companies’ plate.

But reinsurance is like slapping a band-aid on a much larger wound.

“Recent state efforts on reinsurance have worked, but they aren’t really getting at the overall cost of coverage,” says Kevin Lucia, research professor at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute.

 

 

 

Many fear Hahnemann’s story will send a message: Buying a failing hospital pays

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Academic Medical Center, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Chapter 11, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital Bankruptcy, Hospital Industry, Private Equity • Leave a comment

Many fear Hahnemann’s story will send a message: Buying a failing hospital pays

Hahnemann University Hospital. (Emma Lee/WHYY)

Philadelphia Academic Health System, the company that owns Hahnemann University Hospital, is in bankruptcy proceedings, but the hospital’s real estate is not included in the filing. That has sparked outrage from the nurses union, City Council, and even presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. They say it shows the owner had a plan all along: let the hospital fail, and sell it for its  valuable Center City location.

Indeed, California investment banker Joel Freedman, CEO of Philadelphia Academic Health System, separated out the land beneath the hospital and its adjacent, related buildings from the operating business itself, as is common in private equity purchases.

In fact, that’s how private equity is supposed to work: Big firms buy struggling companies with the promise of financial support, and to improve their operations and business strategy. When things go right, the business succeeds, and the private equity firm sells it in a public offering or to another bidder for more than it paid.

In other cases though, the process is not so successful. Private equity firms often load companies up with debt, take dividends out for themselves, sell off valuable real estate, and charge monitoring fees and interest on their loans, leaving a company in a much weaker position than it would have been otherwise, and often on the verge of bankruptcy.

“The house never loses,” said Eileen Applebaum, co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “The private equity firm makes money whether the company succeeds or it doesn’t.”

Freedman formed Philadelphia Academic Health System to run the hospital. His California private equity firm is called Paladin Healthcare, and he has previously bought and managed hospitals in California and Washington, D.C. At the end of June, Freedman announced that Hahnemann, the 496-bed hospital at the corner of Broad and Vine streets, would close. In early July, Philadelphia Academic Health filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition.

Applebaum, who has taught economics at Temple University and is a native Philadelphian, said that if Paladin Healthcare had really wanted to save the hospital, there are a few things it should have tried.

The most obvious, she said, would have been to diversify its payer mix. One of the reasons Hahnemann failed financially is because two-thirds of its patients were on Medicaid or Medicare — publicly funded insurance plans that reimburse hospitals for care at lower rates than private insurance does. Applebaum said it’s common for hospitals in areas with high rates of patients on public insurance to buy up smaller hospitals in the suburbs, or in other areas that attract more patients on private insurance.

“You see Thomas Jefferson University outpatient-care centers everywhere, you see smaller suburban hospitals that are part of the Thomas Jefferson system,” she said. “Yes, you want to serve the less well-off communities, but you have to balance that with other communities. Everybody knows this, this is not a mystery.”

Because this strategy is common, the fact that Freedman didn’t try it makes Applebaum dubious that he really wanted to save Hahnemann.

“It does not really appear that they made a good-faith effort to turn this hospital around,” she said.

Freedman declined to comment for this story, but he has said in previous statements that he tried to sell the hospital to a nonprofit, and that he asked the city and state for money to keep it open.

The imbalanced payer mix is not as much of an issue at St. Christopher’s, the 188-bed children’s hospital in North Philadelphia that is also run by Philadelphia Academic Health System. It reported a $58 million pretax profit last year and is not closing.

That’s because almost all kids in the United States have insurance through Medicaid or CHIP, a federal program. Even though those reimbursement rates are also lower than private insurance would pay, children’s hospitals are more accustomed to that, and they adjust their operations accordingly.

“Pediatric hospitals, particularly those who serve a low-income population like St. Christopher’s, have learned how to operate on a Medicaid budget, so to speak, and have found ways to be more efficient and work within that coverage in a way that a lot of hospitals that primarily serve adult patients maybe haven’t had to,” said Lisa Bielamowicz, co-founder of Gist Healthcare, a D.C.-based health care consulting firm.

Last week, a judge in U.S.  Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington gave the green light for hospital systems to bid on St. Christopher’s. A consortium of four health care systems has already expressed interest.

“There’s also an element of wanting to preserve the competitive dynamic and capacity for that care in the market by preserving St. Christopher’s, so that Philadelphia doesn’t become a one-horse town for specialty children’s care,” said Bielamowicz.

Losing St. Chris would leave only Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for inpatient pediatric care. In 2018, two-thirds of the revenue at St. Christopher’s was from Medicaid. It was half that amount at CHOP.

Bielamowicz added that it would be in the best interest of the local systems to take on St. Chris, so vulnerable children didn’t end up in those hospitals’ regular emergency rooms, many of which are at capacity, without the proper resources to care for them.

St. Christopher’s will be auctioned off to the highest bidder, and the bankruptcy judge is expected to approve the sale in September. The hospital’s Erie Avenue site also was not included in the bankruptcy filing.

Hahnemann Hospital’s property — owned by Broad Street Healthcare, the holding company set up by Freedman — totals about 1 million square feet and, according to city records, has a market value of $58 million.

Brad Molotsky, a partner with the law firm Duane Morris who formerly worked as general counsel for Brandywine Realty Trust, said the downtown neighborhood shows promise for developers, but only ones with deep pockets.

“If you rebuilt a million square feet at 500 bucks a square foot, that’s a big ticket,” he said.

Applebaum, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said she is worried that a separate sale of the Hahnemann property to a developer will lay a road map for private equity firms around the country: Buy older hospital in areas that are gentrifying, separate the hospital from its real estate, let the hospitals go downhill, and then sell the real estate to the developers.

“It won’t matter that they lose money in the bankruptcy on the hospital, because they’re going to make so much money on the real estate,” she said.

Another Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, has released a plan that would force private equity firms and funds to share the responsibility for the debt the companies they buy take on in the financial restructuring process. As it stands now, neither Paladin Healthcare, the parent company, or MidCap Financial, which loaned purchase and operating funds to Philadelphia Academic Health System, are on the hook for any of its debt.

“It’s like you bought your neighbor’s house, you got a big mortgage when you bought your neighbor’s house, but it’s your neighbor who has to pay back the mortgage,” said Applebaum.

“So that’s a sweet deal if you can get it.”

 

 

 

Seventy two percent of all rural hospital closures are in states that rejected the Medicaid expansion

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Health Policy, Hospital, Hospital Bankruptcy, Medicaid, Medicaid Expansion, Operating Margin, Operating Performance, Rural Health, Rural Hospital, Safety Net Hospitals, Safety-Net Providers • Leave a comment

https://www.gq.com/story/rural-hospitals-closing-in-red-states

Image result for rural hospital bankruptcies

States that refused Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion are hemorrhaging hospitals in rural areas.

Roughly 20 percent of Americans live in rural areas, including more than 13 million children, according to the last U.S. census. And, according to research and reporting by the Pittsburg Morning Sun and its parent company, GateHouse Media, those people have been steadily losing access to hospitals for years.

In Oklahoma, Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi, at least 52 percent of all rural hospitals spent more money than they made between 2011 to 2017. In Kansas, it’s 64 percent, and five hospitals there shut down completely in that time. Since 2010, 106 rural hospitals have closed across the country. (Another 700 are “on shaky ground,” and about 200 are “on the verge of collapse,” according to Gatehouse.) Of those 106 that closed, 77 were in deep red states where local politicians refused the Obama administration’s Medicaid expansion that came about as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

In short, the federal government provided funds to expand coverage for Medicaid, a program that helps pay for health care for low income patients. But the expansion was optional, and 14 Republican-controlled states rejected to take the money. The only state that bucked this trend was Utah, where rural hospitals were among the most profitable in the country thanks to a policy of shifting funds and resources from urban hospitals. Only 14 percent of rural hospitals operated at a loss and none shut down over the same time period.

The number of rural hospitals has been shriveling for some time now: more than 200 rural hospitals closed between 1990 and 2000, according to a report from the Office of Health and Human Services. Since rural areas have been losing hospitals for decades already, every additional closure is more devastating. And even the hospitals that remain open are struggling to stay fully staffed. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, rural parts of the U.S. need an additional 4,022 doctors to completely close their coverage gaps.

Just refusing the Medicaid expansion alone doesn’t completely account for the hundreds of rural hospital closures across Republican-controlled states. For one thing, medical treatment and technology has gotten more advanced. Dr. Nancy Dickey, president of the Rural and Community Health Institute at Texas A&M, told Gatehouse, “Most of what we knew how to do in the 1970s and 1980s could be done reasonably well in small towns. But scientific developments and advances in neurosurgery, microscopic surgery and the like required a great deal more technology and a bigger population to support the array of technology specialists.” As a result, the number of services that rural hospitals offered started to shrink, while at the same time rural populations dwindled as both jobs and young people moved away. What’s left were older, poorer populations that needed more medical care and had less money to pay for it. In that situation, hospitals can’t generate enough revenue to stay open, let alone enough to pay the salaries of even new doctors, who carry an average of $200,000 in student debt.

Still, if the state legislatures and governors had accepted the money, billions of dollars could have gone to improving insurance coverage and propping up the hospitals’ bottom lines. In a health-care industry where the average CEO pay is $18 million a year, hospitals have to produce a lot of money to justify their existence to shareholders. The Medicaid expansion was one of the few lifelines available to rural Americans, and their politicians snubbed it.

 

 

Hospital CEO says more price disclosure won’t bring down healthcare costs

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, American Hospital Association (AHA), Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Health Insurance Industry, Health Policy, Hospital Industry, Out of Pocket Expenses, Price Transparency, Pricing • Leave a comment

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mount-sinai-hospital-ceo-more-price-disclosure-wont-bring-down-health-care-costs-161029331.html

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The Trump administration is pushing ahead with a new rule that could require hospitals to reveal the prices they negotiated with insurance companies. The White House says the move could help bring the free market into the murky world of health care.

The Trump administration is pushing ahead with a new rule that could require hospitals to reveal the prices they negotiated with insurance companies. The White House says the move could help bring the free market into the murky world of health care.

But the CEO of one of the nation’s largest hospital systems says the rule will just lead to more confusion for consumers.

“You won’t still know what your cost will be even when you look at our prices,” Dr. Kenneth Davis, CEO of the Mount Sinai Health System, told Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade. He says insurers like Cigna (CI), UnitedHealth (UNH), Anthem (ANTM) and Aetna parent CVS Health (CVS) should be the ones to house that information and help customers make sense of it.

“There are so many nuances in the insurance policies that going on our site isn’t going to tell you what you’re really going to pay,” he said. “You need the insurance information, and that’s the information that’s available from the insurance company. They know negotiated prices. So you’re really asking the wrong people to disclose the information.”

The rule could show how widely prices vary between regions and even at hospitals and clinics in the same city. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma called it a “turning point in health care and a turning point to the free market in health care.”

But the hospital industry’s main lobbying group, the American Hospital Association, said in a statement that move could “seriously limit the choices available to patients in the private market and fuel anticompetitive behavior among commercial health insurers in an already highly concentrated insurance industry.”

Hospitals and insurance companies are notoriously secretive about their contract deals, something Dr. Davis attributes to competition between care providers and the insurance companies. Insurers are looking for the best deal, he said, while providers want the highest payment.

“Everyone’s worried about what they will then negotiate with the insurance company,” he said. “The insurance companies are worried, in turn, that other health networks like ours might ask for higher prices.”

Dr. Davis says regulators should be pushing the insurance companies and not the hospitals to disclose pricing.

“We have thousands of items that we would list items on,” he told Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous and Brian Sozzi. “If I have an insurance policy and I go online, I don’t know — still — what my co-pays and deductibles are going to be. Where that information should be is on the insurance company website.”

“I don’t have a problem disclosing that information,” he said. “I just think it’s important that people be able to use that information validly.

Without knowing what their insurance policy covers, he said, “they won’t know what they’re going to pay anyway.”

 

 

Trump to Sign Medicare Order as Part of Attack on Democrats’ Health-Care Message

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Essential Health Benefits, Executive Orders, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Health System, High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, High Premiums, High Prices, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Out of Pocket Expenses, Preexisting Conditions • Leave a comment

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-proposal-would-allow-prescription-drug-imports-from-canada-11564580906?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter%20Weekly%20Roundup:%20Healthcare%20Dive%2008-03-2019&utm_term=Healthcare%20Dive%20Weekender

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Administration moves ahead to bolster Medicare Advantage plans and authorize lower-cost drug imports from Canada, as it takes on Medicare for All.

President Trump is preparing to sign an executive order next week on Medicare and moving ahead with allowing some drug imports from Canada, part of the administration’s effort to engineer a response to Democratic proposals that candidates say would expand health coverage to all Americans.

The executive order would aim to strengthen Medicare for 44 million Americans and portray the president as defending it against Democrats who want to expand it nationwide under their Medicare for All strategy, a White House official said Wednesday.

The administration on Wednesday also said it would allow the imports of some drugs from Canada, backing an idea most Democratic candidates have also said they support. More executive orders, including one on drug prices, are possible, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Mr. Trump is taking a two-pronged approach to his 2020 campaign message on health care, attacking Medicare for All as socialism and rolling out a blitz of health-care initiatives intended to position him as the person who can drive down costs and protect health care.

The president is expected to contrast the Democrats’ plans with his in a speech set for Aug. 6. “He’s going to indict and impugn the idea of Medicare for All,” a White House official said of the speech. Senior White House aides and agency officials are holding meetings several times a week on health care plans, the official said.

Democratic challengers say Mr. Trump has endangered coverage by backing cuts to Medicare and a lawsuit that could dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

“We are not about trying to take away health care from anyone,” Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said during the candidates’ debate Tuesday. “That’s what the Republicans are trying to do.”

This week, the administration proposed a rule that would compel hospitals to disclose discounted rates with insurers. The president signed an executive order to overhaul kidney-disease care, and the White House relaxed restrictions on pretax health savings accounts so the money can be used on treatment to prevent disease.

Mr. Trump is expected to sign the Medicare executive order next week at The Villages, a Florida retirement community with 120,000 residents that is majority Republican.

Mr. Trump may call for agency action to bolster Medicare Advantage plans, which private insurers offer under contract with Medicare and cover about 22 million people, according to two people familiar with the executive order. The president is likely to focus on curbing waste and abuse in Medicare that can add to the program’s cost. In addition, the order may aim to let Medicare Advantage plans offer a wider array of supplemental benefits. The administration has already taken steps in this direction by letting home health-care providers become partners in the Medicare Advantage contracts.

Mr. Trump also is expected to push for changes that could lower the price of patient visits to hospital outpatient clinics, two of the people said. Those visits can cost more than visits to clinics operated by doctors. “This is part of the president’s broader vision to put American patients first,” one person familiar with the executive order said.

A White House spokesman declined to confirm the details or comment on the executive order.

House Republicans and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar have criticized the plans from Democrats, saying they would end Medicare Advantage and imperil the Medicare program, which covers 44 million Americans.

“Our administration wants to strengthen the program, protect the program, make sure it’s sustainable over the long term,” Seema Verma, administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Wednesday at a press event. “We need to work toward that instead of forcing so many more people onto the program.”

 

 

 

In Wednesday’s second Democratic debate, 7 of 10 candidates support Medicare for All

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Essential Health Benefits, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Medicare, Medicare Buy-In, Medicare for All, Out of Pocket Expenses, Preexisting Conditions, Public Good, Single Payer Health System, Single Payer Healthcare System, Underinsured, Uninsured, Universal Healthcare System • Leave a comment

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Democratic candidates take the stage during first debate in June.

Expanding coverage, lowering healthcare costs, central to Democratic agenda.

Tonight, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Andrew Yang, Julián Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Michael Bennet, Jay Inslee, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bill de Blasio take the stage for round two of the Democratic presidential debates.

Seven support Medicare for All. The others – Biden, Bennett and Inslee have come out in favor of a public option. Here, in no particular order, is a look at where each candidate stands on healthcare coverage.

Joe Biden

As vice president to President Barack Obama, former Senator Joe Biden carries into this election the legacy of the Affordable Care Act. As president, Biden said he would protect the ACA and prevent further Republican attempts to dismantle it.

Unlike many of his Democratic rivals, Biden does not support full Medicare for All. Instead of getting rid of private insurance, Biden said he would build on the ACA through the Biden Plan to create a public health insurance option. As in Medicare, costs would be reduced through negotiating for lower prices from hospitals and other providers.

He also has a plan to increase the value of the ACA tax credits by eliminating the 400% income cap on tax credit eligibility and lowering the limit on the cost of coverage from 9.86% of income to 8.5%. This means that no one would spend more than 8.5% of their income on health insurance. Additionally,  Biden would base the size of tax credits on the cost of the higher-tiered gold plan, rather than silver plan.

Biden also supports premium-free access to the public option for individuals in the 14 states that have not expanded Medicaid under the ACA. States that have already expanded Medicaid would have the choice of moving the expansion population to the premium-free public option, as long as the states continue to pay their current share of the cost of covering those individuals.

Biden also promises to stop surprise billing, tackle market concentration, repeal the exception allowing drug companies to avoid negotiating with Medicare over drug prices and limiting the launch price for drugs that face no competition, among other actions.

In his words: “When we passed the Affordable Care Act, I told President Obama it was a big deal – or something to that effect.”

Kamala Harris

California Senator Kamala Harris often refers to her mother’s diagnosis of colon cancer and her Medicare coverage for treatment as an example of why all Americans should have Medicare for All.

Harris is looking to eliminate premiums and out-of-pocket costs through government insurance that guarantees comprehensive care including dental and vision and coverage. Harris gives no estimate of the cost of universal healthcare, but says taking profit out of America’s healthcare system would save money.

Her Medicare for All plan, which is similar to Senator Bernie Sanders – would cover all medically necessary services, including emergency room visits, doctor visits, vision, dental, hearing aids, mental health and substance use disorder treatment, telehealth and comprehensive reproductive care services. It would allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices.

As former Attorney General of California who won a $320 million settlment from insurers, Harris said she wants to take on Big Pharma and private insurers to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

She also has strong views on prosecuting opioid makers and for preserving women’s right to healthcare and protecting Planned Parenthood from the financial cuts and policies of the Trump Administration.

She would institute an audit of prescription drug costs to ensure pharmaceutical companies are not charging more than other comparable countries, a comprehensive maternal child health program to reduce deaths among women and infants of color, and rural healthcare reforms, such as increasing residency slots for rural areas with workforce shortages and loan forgiveness for rural healthcare professionals.

In her words on the ACA: “As someone who fought tooth and nail as Attorney General and as Senator to prevent repeal, that’s exactly what I will continue to do.”

Cory Booker

Senator Cory Anthony Booker, first African-American Senator from New Jersey, and former mayor of Newark, is also a Medicare for All proponent.

He also wants to implement universal paid family and medical leave.

He supports lowering costs for prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices and by importing drugs from Canada and other countries, the latter a policy announced today by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

He would also invest in ending the maternal mortality rate and work to reduce racial disparities in maternal mortality rates.

One of his big issues is expanding eligibility for long-term services and support for low and middle-income Americans needing care at home. He wants long-term care workers to be paid a minimum of $15 an hour.To limit the impact of the program on state budgets, the new costs associated with the expansion of Medicaid long-term care services and workforce standards would be financed entirely by the federal government in, effectively, a 100% match. The cost would be financed by making the tax code more progressive by reforming the capital gains, estate, and income taxes.

In his words: “Healthcare is a human right.”

Kirsten Gillebrand

Kirsten Gillebrand, U.S. Senator from New York, originally ran for a House seat in that state on a platform that supported the expansion of Medicare, a view she still holds, and in 2017 expressed support for Senator Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill.

In May, Gillebrand reiterated her support, saying the best way to achieve a single-payer system is to let people buy-in over a transition period of about four to five years. She favors allowing a public option to create competition with insurance companies. Medicare needs to be fixed first so that reimbursement rates better reflect costs, she said.

In 2011 she helped pass the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which provides treatment to the first responders of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The law provides health monitoring and services for 9/11-related health issues among those exposed to the debris and tainted air of the attack’s aftermath.

In her words: “Under the healthcare system we have now, too many insurance companies continue to value their profits more than they value the people they are supposed to be helping.”

Bill de Blasio

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio believes everyone, including undocumented immigrants, has a right to receive healthcare, and has repeatedly voiced his support for a national single-payer health plan.

He and rival Elizabeth Warren raised their hands during the first debate when asked if they supported Medicare for All.

One of his accomplishments as mayor was signing a bill into law that established a paid sick leave and safe leave plan for the city.

First unveiled in January, the program NYC Care, guarantees healthcare for the roughly 600,000 New Yorkers who aren’t currently insured, which de Blasio touted as the “most comprehensive health system in the nation.” He has indicated that NYC Care could become a model nationwide.

The plan encompasses primary and specialty care, pediatric and maternity care and mental health services. The idea is that NYC Care works on what de Blasio said was a “sliding scale,” in which people can essentially pay what they can for care. While the city already has a public option for healthcare, de Blasio said NYC Care will pay for direct comprehensive care for people who can’t afford insurance or who aren’t covered by Medicaid.

The program costs $100 million per year for the city — an investment the mayor expects will yield returns.

In his words: “If we don’t help people get their healthcare, we’re going to pay plenty on the back end when people get really sick,” he said recently on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” broadcast.

Jay Inslee

Washington Governor Jay Inslee has planted a flag as “the climate change candidate” and in many ways he’s all in on that single issue, reasoning that things like healthcare policy “become relatively moot if the entire ecosystem collapses on which human life depends.”

That said, he has a strong case to make on healthcare by virtue of having just recently put his state’s money where his fellow candidates’ mouths are: in May he signed the country’s first public option into law in Washington.

Expect him to bring up that accomplishment — in which the state will contract with private insurers to create a public option that pays at Medicare plus 60 percent — in any conversation about healthcare, as he did in the first debate.

In his words: “We hope this will be a smashing success. We hope that it will give a shot of courage to other governors to move forward toward universal access. We were willing to take the leap and we’re gonna learn as we go along, I’m sure, and there will be some modifications. But we had to get started.”

Michael Bennet

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet supports a public option he calls Medicare-X. But where his plan stands apart from others is a strong focus on the rural-urban divide on access to care. He intends to create a healthcare policy that will ensure that all regions of the country are covered by available health plans, addressing what he calls a failure of the ACA exchanges.

His plan is unusually detailed and includes lowering prescription drug prices, closing existing gaps in care, and, yes, promoting telemedicine and other technology that can bolster rural healthcare. He also has provisions for combatting substance abuse, improving maternal and mental health, and bringing more support to senior caregivers.

In his words: “As president, I would build on the Affordable Care Act to cover everyone, rather than doing away with our current system. My Medicare-X plan gives every family the choice to buy an affordable public option or keep the plan they have today. It starts in rural areas, where there is very little competition and requires the federal government to negotiate drug prices. I have fought for this approach for almost a decade, because it is the most effective and fastest way to cover everyone and drive down costs.”

Julián Castro

The former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and San Antonio Mayor favors a Medicare for All, single-payer system.

To pay for the system, Castro has said he would raise taxes on corporations and on the wealthiest Americans — the “0.05, 0.5 or 1%,” he said.

While he favors a single-payer system, Castro said he would allow private insurance, saying that anyone who wants their own private insurance plan should be able to have one.

In his words: Castro said at an event in Iowa that, “The U.S. should be the healthiest nation in the world.”

Andrew Yang

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang of New York is founder of Venture for America, a two-year fellowship program for recent grads who want to work at a startup and create jobs in American cities.

He supports Medicare for All and has called the Affordable Care Act a step in the right direction that didn’t go far enough because access to medicine isn’t guaranteed and the incentives for healthcare providers don’t align with providing quality, efficient care.

Doctors are incentivized to act as factory workers, he has said, churning through patients and prescribing redundant tests, rather than doing what they’d prefer–spending extra time with each patient to ensure overall health.

Medicare for All will increase access to preventive care, bringing overall healthcare costs down. Cost can also be controlled directly by setting prices provided for medical services.

He cites the Cleveland Clinic, where doctors are paid a flat salary instead of by a price-for-service model. Redundant tests are at a minimum, and physician turnover is much lower than at comparable hospitals, he said.

And the Southcentral Foundation which uses a holistic approach to treat native Alaskans with mental and physical problems by referring patients to psychologists during routine physicals.

Also, the current system of employer-sponsored insurance prevents employees from having economic mobility.

In his words: “New technologies – robots, software, artificial intelligence – have already destroyed more than 4 million U.S. jobs, and in the next 5-10 years, they will eliminate millions more.”

Tulsi Gabbard

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is a military veteran who supports Medicare for All as a cosponsor of H.R.676, the Expanded & Improved Medicare for All Act.

But she is currently getting press for her lawsuit against Google claiming alleged election interference.

Following the first Democratic primary debate on June 26, many people searched her name, but “without any explanation, Google suspended Tulsi’s Google Ads account,” her office said in a statement, according to The Verge.

Tulsi claims the tech giant suspended her campaign’s Google Ads account just after that first debate.

Congress must act to prevent the tech giant from exerting too much influence, she claimed Monday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
In her words: “This is really about the unchecked power these big tech monopolies have over our public discourse and how this is a real threat to our freedom of speech and to our fair elections.”