Category Archives: Health Policy

Why have Medicare costs per person slowed down?

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Aging Population, Baby Boomers, Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Health Policy, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicare Buy-In, Medicare for All, Medicare Part A, Medicare Part B • Leave a comment

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The 65+ population now makes up 16% of the US population, up from 11% in 1980. In response to an aging population, Medicare costs are going up. Benefits totaled $713 billion in 2018, 25% higher than in 2009, and Medicare spending accounts for a fifth of all healthcare spending as of the latest year of data.

However, while program costs are increasing, there is an interesting counter-trend – the per person cost for insuring someone through Medicare has actually decreased.

In 2018, the overall cost of Medicare per enrollee was $13,339 per year, about $30 less than it was in 2009, adjusting for inflation. That’s even as benefits across Medicare totaled $713.4 billion, $144.4 billion more than in 2009.

Why are the costs of insuring someone through Medicare going down? A combination of demographics and policy changes may point to an answer.

THE AVERAGE MEDICARE BENEFICIARY IS GETTING YOUNGER

The average age fell from 76 to 75 between 2007 and 2017. Enrollment in all types of Medicare increased 29% during that period from 44.4 million to 58.5 million.

That one year drop in average age is significant for Medicare costs.

An influx of Baby Boomers enrolling in Medicare is playing a role in slowing down an increase in costs for Medicare Part A, which funds hospital stays, skilled nurse facilities, hospice and parts of home health care. In 2008, the share of Original Medicare (Part A or B) beneficiaries who were 65 to 74 years old was 43%. In 2017, 65- to 74-year-olds made up 48% of beneficiaries, the group’s highest share in the 21st century.

A 2015 Congressional Budget Office study showed that we spend 73% more on an enrollee in the 75 to 84 bracket than we do on those in the 65 to 74 bracket.

Our analysis below show how demographics factor into Medicare costs, especially age.

In 2017, there were 38,347,556 Medicare Part A enrollees, making up 100.0% of total enrollees. The federal government spent $188,093,274,340 on program payments for this group, 100.0% of the total Total Part A program payments for this type of enrollee changed from $5,052 in 2013 to $4,905 in 2017, a -2.9% change.

With Medicare Part B there were 33,562,359 enrollees, making up 100.0% of total enrollees. The federal government spent $188,886,121,627 on program payments for this group, 100.0% of the total Total Part B program payments for this type of enrollee changed from $5,287 in 2013 to $5,628 in 2017, a 6.4% change.

 

Hospitals as medical debt litigators

Posted on by • Posted in Debt Collection, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Non-Profit Healthcare Industry, Rev Cycle Management, Tax Exempt Status, Wage Garnishment • Leave a comment

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Illustration of rope lassoing a hospital bill.

Tax-exempt hospitals are again raising eyebrows over how they harass patients, often the poorest, in court by trying to recoup medical debts, my colleague Bob Herman writes.

Driving the news: ProPublica and MLK50 published a deep dive yesterday on Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, a $2 billion not-for-profit and faith-based hospital system in Tennessee that has filed more than 8,300 lawsuits against patients over the past 5 years.

  • One of the patients featured in the story made less than $14,000 last year, and Methodist is suing her for more than $33,000. The hospital operates in the second-poorest large metropolitan area in the nation.
  • Methodist obtained wage garnishment orders in almost half of the cases it filed between 2014 and 2018, meaning that the debtor’s employer was required to send the court a portion of the worker’s after-tax income.

Between the lines: As we wrote this week, hospitals taking patients to court is both common and longstanding.

The bottom line: Not-for-profit hospitals market themselves as charities, but they act more like for-profit peers — renewing questions of whether those organizations’ tax exemptions are justified.

  • Coincidentally, the American Hospital Association released a paper Thursday touting hospitals’ community benefits, but the paper has some of the same flaws as prior analyses.

What we’re watching: These practices have drawn the ire of Sen. Chuck Grassley, who is now chairman of the powerful Finance Committee.

  • “Such hospitals seem to forget that tax exemption is a privilege, not a right. In addition to withholding financial assistance to low-income patients, they give top executives salaries on par with their for-profit counterparts,” Grassley wrote in a 2017 op-ed.

 

 

 

Even Democrats prefer more moderate “Medicare for All”

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

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Allowing people to buy into Medicare is more popular than establishing a single-payer health care system — including among Democrats, according to a recent Navigator poll.

Why it matters: Bernie Sanders made “Medicare for All” a popular concept, but even its supporters have different ideas about what it entails. And more moderate versions have the upper hand.

Between the lines: Most people don’t have a nuanced understanding of health policy, and even within the same poll, different ways of describing the same policy yielded different results.

By the numbers: Even a majority of Republicans said that they would support a Medicare buy-in, when given a choice between that or single-payer.

  • In another section of the poll, though, a 40% plurality of Republicans said “expanding Medicare” was a bad idea, and 59% said that “Medicare for anyone who wants it” is a bad idea.

Yes, but: A version of Medicare for All that eliminates private insurance is still supported by a majority of both Democrats and independents.

  • 78% of Democrats said a “universal health care system” is a good idea, 76% said that a “‘Medicare for All’ program” is a good idea, and 52% said that a “single payer health care system” is a good idea.

What they’re saying: Polling aside, “I think Medicare for All is what the American people want and need,” Sanders said in a brief interview.

  • “I think the vision of a simple, seamless system of health care where you have the care that you need, your loved ones have the care that they need…is very, very appealing. Many ideas are being presented for how do we get to that,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, who has a Medicare buy-in proposal.

The bottom line: There’s plenty of opportunity to sway the health care debate, but moderate Democrats seem to have the most popular ideas right now.

 

 

 

 

Ominous sign in ACA case

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, District Court of Appeals, Health Policy, Supreme Court • Leave a comment

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The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday added a new question to the high-stakes lawsuit over the Affordable Care Act’s survival: Whether Democratic attorneys general or the House of Representatives have the legal standing to defend the ACA in court.

Translation, from Axios’ Sam Baker: The court is asking whether it ought to kick out the entire pro-ACA side of the case.

  • Technically Texas (with a group of other red states) is suing the Trump administration. But the Trump administration says it agrees with Texas’ position.
  • Blue states and House Democrats stepped in so that somebody would be arguing the pro-ACA position.

The intrigue: If the 5th Circuit does boot Democrats off of this lawsuit, that would likely mean no one can appeal a lower court’s ruling striking down the entire law.

  • As University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley explained on Twitter, it’s not necessarily clear how all that would play out.
  • Presumably, the Supreme Court would be disinclined to let a single district court judge have the final say on whether the Affordable Care Act lives or dies. So there would probably be fresh procedural wrangling to revive some kind of appeal.

The bottom line: This could be a bad development for the ACA — or it could end up not mattering much at all, if the court decides Democrats do have standing. But it’s definitely not a positive development for the health care law.

What’s next: The 5th Circuit will hear oral arguments July 9.

 

Healthcare Reform: “150 million Americans won’t give up their private health insurance to get Medicare for all.” Really?

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Change, Change Management, Health Policy, Medicare, Medicare for All, Preexisting Conditions, Single Payer Health System, Single Payer Healthcare System • Leave a comment

Healthcare Reform: “150 million Americans won’t give up their private health insurance to get Medicare for all.” Really?

Former Representative Jim Delaney (D-Md) threw down the gauntlet to the left-leaning attendees at the California Democratic convention on June 2 by challenging Medicare-for-all.

”The problem with Medicare for all, it’s actually really simple, is that it makes private insurance illegal. And 150 million Americans have private insurance, and 70% of them like it according to polling. So if we want to actually create universal health care, we’re never going to do it by trying to get 150 million Americans to give up what they want.”

The crowd booed at first, but then gave him a respectful hearing. Pundit George Will and commentator Charlie Sykes think Delaney has a good point politically. But let’s look at Delaney’s claim through the apolitical lens of this blog.

1. Why Did Delaney make this claim?

Two reasons:  He wanted to move the debate over U.S. healthcare from sound bites to substance. And Rep. Delaney wanted to distinguish himself from the rest of the pack of Democrat Presidential contenders and position himself as a moderate on this and other issues.

2. Does Medicare-for-all mean making private health insurance illegal?

Clearly for Sen. Bernie Sanders the answer is yes. But not for any of the other Democrat Presidential candidates, at least not right away.  Some like Mayor Pete Buttigieg and entrepreneur Andrew Yang contemplate a gradual path, eventually leading to a single public payer. In Yang’s case, he expects that public health insurance will eventually out-compete private insurance, not that it will be outlawed. Others like Senators Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, Governors Hickenlooper and Inslee, and Rep. Eric Swalwell contemplate using public insurance, alongside private insurance, as the means to get to universal coverage, more like “Medicare for all who want it.”  This month’s Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 55% do not perceive that Medicare-for-all would mean abolishing private insurance.

3. How many Democratic candidates advocate Medicare-for-all?

Of the 24 Democrats who have announced their candidacy (25, if you count former Sen. Mike Gravel), 13 advocate some version of Medicare-for-all, but 10 prefer some other approach to achieve universal coverage. Former Vice-President Joe Biden has not put forward a clear position yet. (Sen. Gravel supports universal healthcare “like Medicare.”)

4. What about Republicans?

Many Republicans, including the President himself, have at times given lip service to universal healthcare coverage. Most of them also advocate “protecting” Medicare, in some cases by scaling it back and limiting it. However, the President and Senate Republicans are once again pledging to “repeal and replace Obamacare” with a new plan, touted as “phenomenal” (though no details so far). At first the new plan was promised “in a very short period of time,” then “in next 2 months,” and now most recently “after the 2020 election.” For them, opposition to Medicare-for-all is a political matter of faith, not just a strategy for preserving private health insurance for those who want it.

5. How many Americans have private health insurance?

Private employer-based insurance covered 181 million Americans in 2017. According to the Census Bureau the full 2017 breakdown is:

  • Any insurance at least part-year           295 million
    • Employer-based, private              181 million
    • Direct purchased, private              52 million
    • Government                                  122 million

(Note: Some individuals had more than one type of insurance during year)

  • Uninsured entire year                              29 million

6. Are Americans satisfied with their own private employer-based healthcare insurance?

Americans currently rate the “coverage” (69%) and “quality” (80%) for their own individual health plans as “good” or “excellent,” according to a December 2018 Gallup poll.

7. How does this compare with Medicare satisfaction statistics?

For Medicare recipients the ratings for “coverage” (88%) and “quality” (88%) are even better, in the same poll.

8. Do Americans see any downside to having employer-based healthcare insurance?

Many Americans feel locked into their current jobs lest they lose health benefits. This is especially so if they have chronic pre-existing conditions. Fear of losing coverage subtly puts them at the mercy of the employer for wages and work conditions. In addition, employees are shouldering a larger share of premiums and copays with each passing year.  A Rand study showed that in the first decade of the 2000s, workers gains in productivity were offset by higher healthcare costs, holding their take-home wages flat.  Increasingly, employees are switching to plans with high deductibles and less doctor choice.

Americans also express dissatisfaction with the wider system, even if they are satisfied with their own plans.  They rate “coverage” at 34% and “quality” at 55% nationally.

Americans polled by Gallup are especially dissatisfied with costs. Only 58% are satisfied with cost of their own plan, while a low 20% are satisfied with overall cost in the national system.

9. Who are other stakeholders in the healthcare debate besides employees with employer-based insurance?

All Americans have a stake in healthcare reform.  But here are some stakeholder sub-groups with special issues:

  • small business
  • big business
  • federal, state and local government employers
  • healthcare insurers
  • healthcare systems
  • healthcare professionals
  • other healthcare suppliers (of equipment, drugs, software, subcontractors)
  • healthcare academia.

The uninsured are special stakeholders, as well.

10. Which of these stakeholders have the most to lose with Medicare-for-all?

In the first instance, healthcare insurers would be most directly affected. On closer look, I predict that several functions would not change much at all under a single-payer. There would still be enrollments, benefits management, claims processing, chronic disease management, contract negotiation, and customer service. These functions would continue, either in the form of subcontracts with government payers or in the form of direct government employment. Meanwhile, some would say that insurance companies have abdicated their job of true risk management, and have simply become pass-throughs for local health system monopolies and oligopolies. Under Medicare-for-all administrative complexities would be simplified, and inflated profits and salaries would be constrained, with resultant cost savings for the overall system

11. Which of these stakeholders have the most to gain with Medicare-for-all?

Big business and public sector employers probably have the most to gain from Medicare-for-all or other healthcare reform.  In 1991, Sam Walton famously railed to his managers, “These people are skinnin’ us alive not just here in Bentonville but everywhere else, too….They’re charging us five and six times what they ought to charge us….So we need to work on a program where we’ve got hospitals and doctors…saving our customers money and our employees money.” Walmart and others like Bezos, Buffet and Dimon’s innovative Haven healthcare management enterprise are taking matters into their own hands out of frustration with traditional insurance’s inability to control healthcare costs and deliver value.

Small businesses also stand to gain much from jettisoning healthcare costs and administrative burdens under a single payer system. Small businesses feel a disproportionate brunt of current high healthcare costs.  For them, a single sick employee can jack up their experience-rating. Tracking payments and maintaining regulatory compliance saps valuable administrative time. For these reasons, just 29 percent of small businesses with fewer than 50 employees provided group health insurance in 2016.  Many dropped insurance for their employees and referred them to the public exchanges instead.

12. Is Medicare-for-all the end goal for its supporters, or only the means to a further goal?

Democrat candidates base their arguments for Medicare-for-all, or for their alternative approaches, primarily on achieving universal coverage. This is a worthy goal in itself. Having healthcare insurance has been linked to quality of life, life expectancy, worker productivity, and financial security.

But this blog has argued that an even more critical goal is constraining costs. Climbing healthcare costs are consuming an ever-greater share of the GDP, diverting resources from other worthy projects, and stressing household, corporate and public budgets.

This blog, thus, sees single payer as a means to the end of leveraging cost containment.

 13. If Medicare-for-all in some form would give government the ability to finally constrain costs, who would be the biggest losers?

Clearly, potentially the biggest losers would be the healthcare industry, from front-line workers to professionals to health system CEOs.  However, many could shift into higher-value healthcare activities. Others could transition to equivalent jobs in other service industries. True, a few might need to accept cuts in their bloated incomes. Since healthcare currently comprises almost one-fifth of all economic activity, these transitions should be done slowly. Leaders should do some industrial policy planning to facilitate changes and mitigate disruptions. Having said that, we should keep in mind that healthcare professionals are generally well educated, motivated, adaptable and resourceful, thus able to successfully navigate change.

Conclusion

Rep. Delaney asks a good question:  Whether Americans with current employer-based health insurance would trade it for Medicare-for-all.  Would they recognize that Medicare gets better quality and coverage ratings than private insurance? Would they view changing to Medicare-for-all as a fair bargain to achieve universal access for all? Do they think that single-payer would give the government leverage to finally constrain costs?  Do they recognize that the total cost of healthcare – whether in the form of out-of-pocket payments, paycheck deductions, or new “$30 trillion” healthcare taxes  – comes out of their wallets, one way or another?

On the other hand, could a larger public insurer (Medicare-for-all-who-want-it) gain sufficient reach and clout to tame the healthcare tapeworm without a Sanders-style single payer system?  This blog will tackle that question in another post.

Now, take action.

 

Health care price transparency: Fool’s gold, or real money in your pocket?

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, All-Payer System, Benchmark Pricing, Competition, Fools Gold, Free Market, Health Policy, President Executive Order, Price Transparency, Surprise Bills, Uniform Prices • Leave a comment

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The news is full of stories about monumental surprise hospital bills, sky-high drug prices and patients going bankrupt. The government’s approach to addressing this, via an executive order that President Trump signed June 24, 2019, is to make hospitals disclose prices, including negotiated rates with insurers, so that patients supposedly can comparison shop. But this is fool’s gold – information that doesn’t address the real question about why these prices are so high in the first place.

I know from my time as an academic researcher, hospital board member, adviser to Congress and health insurance CEO that the problems in health care are far deeper than just knowledge about hospital charges that few will ever pay.

While it is easy to blame greedy pharmaceutical manufacturers, health insurers and hospital executives, the problem comes from the very nature of our confused system. Who actually benefits from these high prices and why do they persist? Is it just greed, or something endemic in the system?

Should the EOB be DOA?

The EOB is not a bill, the insurance companies want you to know. Lynne Anderson, CC BY-SA

Many in the health care system, including hospitals, doctors and insurers, are complicit in this confusing mess, although all can justify their individual actions.

The confusion begins for the patient when he or she receives an explanation of benefit (EOB). This typically says it is “Not a Bill,” although it really looks like one. What it actually shows is incredibly high provider prices and an equally implausible discount. The bottom line lists the actual payment and the amount the patient owes. Patients are supposed to be grateful for the discounts after they recover from the sticker shock of the listed price.

When a service is provided out-of-network, or is not covered at all, or the person doesn’t have insurance, the patient is supposed to pay this full amount. Such “surprise bills” typically come to those least prepared to pay and, as a result, providers typically recover very little. So no one wins, except the collection agency and the lawyers.

I believe the standard EOB is the beginning of unnecessary complexity that leads to higher prices and an impossibly flawed market where shopping can never really work properly.

This ridiculous situation actually starts with insurance companies selling policies to ill-informed employers who don’t understand health care but effectively are the purchasers. Employers hire brokers and consultants to collect proposals from insurers; by some estimates, as many as 50 million people in the U.S. are covered by such plans.

These proposals frequently focus on the size of the discount from providers’ list prices as an indicator of how much the employer can save. The overall total cost or coverage is more important, but harder to estimate, since it depends on actual care delivered to employees. The unrecognized incentive for providers and insurers is to increase prices in order to increase the size of the discount.

I have actually seen cases where the insurer requests higher list prices from a provider to pump up the discount they can report to employers. This is crazy.

Stop the madness

One solution to this mess would be to require uniform prices by all providers to all purchasers. Maryland has a form of this “all-payer” system where everyone pays the same under rate regulation or negotiation. France, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands also use this form of control.

Benchmark pricing against what Medicare pays would do something similar, with everyone paying a fixed percent of these nationally regulated rates. This would blunt the ability of hospitals to arbitrarily jack up list charges and negotiate contract prices with insurers based on relative market power.

Unfortunately for consumers, such rate setting may be a political “bridge too far.” While some progressives might like regulation, conservatives likely will not because it challenges their faith in the superiority of free-market negotiations around prices.

And it might dampen innovation and even competition, depending on how realistic and flexible the regulators are in responding to new technology, alternative procedures, quality differentials and consumer demands – the decisions where markets are supposed work well.

Can price competition work?

It’s hard to shop around for some procedures, such as complex surgeries. Yulai Studio/shutterstock.com

The overarching question is whether patients and employers can ever do comparison shopping effectively. Clearly for many things, there can be no head-to-head choice. Trauma, highly complex surgery and other care cannot be predicted ahead of time or standardized to fit a consumer market model.

However, some things can be compared. Insurers now routinely let consumers know if a test or image could be done for less elsewhere. Perhaps comparing just a few services as an overall cost indicator is the best we can do.

But it may also be possible to determine overall relative bargains for a typical package of care to guide choices. My Cleveland hospital, MetroHealth System, manages Medicaid patients for a total cost which is 29% less than when they wander around without a medical home. This is a meaningful difference.

A first step towards comparison shopping might be eliminating the EOB as we know it. Rather than showing meaningless list prices, it would be more revealing if hospitals and insurers had to disclose their actual payment terms.

An alternative benchmark might be to provide health care consumers with a range of contract rates or the Medicare rate for a service. Then the difference between what you and others actually pay could be useful in comparing providers and insurers.

Those who long for a total overhaul of our system through “Medicare for All” or its variants, such as many Democrats vying for the nomination,will still have to deal with the question of how to contract and pay for all these moving parts. The temptation will be toward simple solutions involving prices, discounts and rate regulation – still, I believe, effectively a pursuit of fool’s gold.

 

Medical monopoly: An unusual hospital merger in rural Appalachia leaves residents with few options

Posted on by • Posted in Antitrust, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Bankruptcy, Monopoly, Monopoly Behavior, Rural Health, Rural Hospital, Safety Net Hospitals, Safety-Net Providers • Leave a comment

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2019/06/23/ballad-health-merger-rural-hospital-closures/1342608001/

Protest organizer Dani Cook of Kingsport, Tennessee, conducts a Facebook Live outside Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport on May 7. The merger of Mountain State Health Alliance and Wellmont has led to the downgrading of the area's NICU and trauma center.

KINGSPORT, Tenn. – Molly Worley is an angry grandma.

For weeks she has stubbornly occupied a folding lawn chair on a grassy median outside Holston Valley Medical Center, sheltered from sweltering Appalachian summer sun by a thin tarp and flanked by a rotating crew staging a round-the-clock protest since May 1.

Behind them is the state-of-the-art neonatal intensive care unit where Worley’s newborn grandson spent his first weeks of life treated for opioid exposure.

In the same building is a Level I trauma center to respond to the most critical emergencies.

Both facilities will downgraded in the coming months, diverting the sickest babies and adults elsewhere.

The cuts are the latest fallout from an unusual and controversial merger between two former rival hospital systems headquartered in northeast Tennessee.

The newly formed company, Ballad Health, is now the sole hospital provider for a region the size of New Jersey. For nearly 1.2 million people people living in a largely rural stretch of 29 counties in northeast Tennessee and nearby parts of Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky, Ballad hospitals are the only inpatient option.

Mergers involving hospitals that compete for same patients face opposition from the Federal Trade Commission, which can block mergers on the grounds the combined company can limit patient choices, cut services, raise prices and diminish quality.

Ballad officials found a way to bypass FTC rules. They turned to Tennessee state Sen. Rusty Crowe, R-Johnson City, who successfully carried legislation making the merger possible. Crowe is a longtime paid consultant with Ballad hospitals. 

Only a handful of other states have exempted similar hospital mergers from FTC anti-monopoly rules. Ballad’s is the largest.

CEO Alan Levine said the merger lets the hospital system save money and keep rural hospitals afloat in a state that is already No. 2 in the nation for closures.

Eliminating overlapping staff and services, including the trauma center and NICU, will free funds to invest in other public health initiatives. Ballad pledged to keep open all of its rural hospitals for five years and to invest $308 million in public health, medical education and other initiatives.

“Every decision we make starts and ends with how can we best serve the community and what does the evidence show will lead to the best possible outcome,” Levine said.

“You don’t want a trauma center on every corner and you don’t want a NICU on every corner because it dilutes volume and hurts quality,” he said.

No rural hospitals owned by Ballad have been closed. 

Some residents, doctors, nurses, EMS workers and public officials say the changes by Ballad expose the dangers of a single system imposing decisions on health care services on a captive audience that has no other options. More than 23,000 people have signed a petition opposing Ballad’s proposed changes.

“Never ever have I been this outspoken about anything,” said Worley, 60. “This NICU saved my grandson’s life. With Ballad we have no other choice. They have a monopoly at every level of health care.”

As hospital systems across the country struggle to stay afloat, particularly in rural areas, Ballad’s plan is being closely watched by other states weighing whether to allow other hospitals to take a similar approach.

 

 

 

SUPREME COURT TAKES UP $12B DISPUTE OVER ACA RISK CORRIDOR PAYMENTS

Posted on by • Posted in ACA, ACA Risk Corridor Payments, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), Government Accountability Office, Health Insurance Industry, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Individual Health Insurance, Supreme Court • Leave a comment

https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/finance/supreme-court-takes-12b-dispute-over-aca-risk-corridor-payments

U.S. Supreme Court

The justices agreed to hear arguments over whether Congress can pass riders that withhold funds in contravention of the relevant law’s intent without actually repealing the relevant law.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The health plans argue the ACA’s mandate to issue risk corridor payments could not be repealed through an appropriations rider.

The approximately $12 billion in payments at issue in this dispute are for three benefit years: 2014-2016.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to take up three consolidated cases from health plans challenging Congress’ refusal to authorize $12 billion in risk-mitigation payments under the Affordable Care Act.

The cases—which were brought by Maine Community Health Options, Moda Health Plan Inc., and Land of Lincoln Mutual Health Insurance Co.—argue that the ACA’s risk corridor program obligated Health and Human Services to make payments that the law intended “to induce insurer participation in the health insurance exchanges by mitigating some of the uncertainty associated with insuring formerly uninsured customers.”

Following the 2014 midterm election, lawmakers on Capitol Hill enacted an appropriations law for fiscal year 2015 that “would potentially allot money to HHS to cover” any such payments for the 2014 benefit year, but the law included a rider that required HHS to maintain the budget neutrality of the risk corridor program, the health plans said in their petition.

Because the amounts collected under the risk corridor program for 2014 “came nowhere close to what the government owed to insurers,” the government paid out only 12.6% of the total owed for the year, prorating the funds it owed to each insurer, the health plans wrote.

Similar riders were included in appropriations bills for fiscal years 2016 and 2017. But HHS used the funds it collected from benefit years 2015 and 2016 to further pay what it owed from the 2014 benefit year, making no payments for the 2015 and 2016 benefit years, the health plans wrote. (The program ended after three years.)

The health plans proposed two questions in the petition for a writ of certiorari for the justices to consider, but the justices agreed to hear argument only on the first: “Given the ‘cardinal rule’ disfavoring implied repeals—which applies with ‘especial force’ to appropriations acts and requires that repeal not be found unless the later enactment is ‘irreconcilable’ with the former—can an appropriations rider whose text bars the agency’s use of certain funds to pay a statutory obligation, but does not repeal or amend the statutory obligation, and is thus not inconsistent with it, nonetheless be held to impliedly repeal the obligation by elevating the perceived ‘intent’ of the rider (drawn from unilluminating legislative history) above its text, and the text of the underlying statute?”

In its response to the health plans’ petition, the U.S. government argued that a Government Accountability Office report identified only two possible sources of funding for the risk corridor payments: (1) the funds collected by HHS under the program itself, and (2) any lump-sum appropriation to manage certain Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services programs. By enacting the appropriations laws as it did, Congress said that only the first funding source would be allowed, the response states.

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) President and CEO Matt Eyles said in a statement that insurers need stability from the government.

“Millions of Americans rely on the individual and small group markets for their coverage and care. Health insurance providers are committed to serving these patients and consumers, working with the federal government to deliver affordable coverage and access to quality care,” Eyles said. “The Supreme Court’s decision to hear this case recognizes how important it is for American businesses, including health insurance providers, to be able to rely on the federal government as a fair and reliable partner. Strong, stable and predictable partnerships between the private and the public sector are an essential part of our nation’s economy, and our industry looks forward to having this matter heard before the Court.”

The justices allotted one hour for oral argument on the dispute.

 

 

 

Nurse viewpoint: Modern healthcare system prioritizes profits over care quality

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Life-Saving Devices, Medicare for All, Operating Margin, Operating Performance, Outcomes, Pharmaceutical Industry, Quality of Care • Tagged • Leave a comment

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/nurse-viewpoint-modern-healthcare-system-prioritizes-profits-over-care-quality.html

The American healthcare system benefits companies, hospital systems and administrators over patients and providers, wrote Theresa Brown, PhD, BSN, RN, in an op-ed for CNN.

 Five highlights from Dr. Brown’s opinion piece:

1. Providers work in an environment of “scarcity,” whereas CEOs, pharmaceutical companies and hospital systems live in “a world of plenty.”

2. Dr. Brown cites her own experience at a teaching hospital in the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center system, where she says nurses who requested more life-saving devices were told to do “more with less,” despite the hospital system’s multibillion-dollar revenues.

3. Dr. Brown writes nurses at the teaching hospital also faced staff shortages, which have been shown to negatively affect patient health outcomes.

4. In contrast, 14 pharmaceutical companies made profits of at least $1 billion in 2018. Yet Dr. Brown argues that vilifying such companies misinterprets the problem, which is the long line separating cash-strapped hospital floors from the large profits that benefit systems, companies and administrators over patients.

5. Dr. Brown supports Medicare for All, writing that it is a critical measure for the 66 percent of American households that say they must choose between purchasing food and healthcare.

 

 

5 Ways Technology is Transforming the Healthcare Industry

Posted on by • Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Change, Change Management, Eye Diseases, Health Policy, Health System, Heat Disease, Hospital, Information Technology, Skin Cancer, Stokes • Leave a comment

5 Ways Technology is Transforming the Healthcare Industry

5 Ways Technology is Transforming the Healthcare Industry