Category Archives: Uncategorized

Consumer-directed health plans enrollment up but costs are not coming down, RAND finds

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http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/consumer-directed-health-plans-enrollment-costs-are-not-coming-down-rand-finds?mkt_id=1526895&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWm1NeVpXWmtNall4WTJWbCIsInQiOiJDV1RRSkR0bFhQOGpsaDlib0hldGUrdEVoK0ttS2Q1VXBQQldYaFhFeXRaYW4xRE9ZXC9rU1gxd0QwdlFtbCtPYWR5d3QwK0hHTlEwb0NKSnkrd2pcL0J1NCtOTklqc2hyZ1ArWDZRY2E5RjBoXC80NG8xaVhzT1kyV3Z1N0tIUnRCeCJ9

 

Even though high-deductible insurance options could save patients thousands of dollars every year, most people are not shopping around.

An increasingly popular form of health insurance touted for its money-saving potential has not reduced spending on unnecessary medical services, a new study shows.

Researchers from the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and the RAND Corp. found that consumer-directed, high-deductible health plans have little or no effect on curbing spending on 26 services that medical professional and industry groups have deemed “low value.”

The researchers compared patient spending on unnecessary medical services, such as an MRI for lower back pain or imaging for an uncomplicated headache, before and after they switched from a traditional insurance plan to a consumer-directed health plan — a form of high-deductible insurance.

The study, published in The American Journal of Managed Care, is the latest of several to indicate that high-deductible plans are falling short of their promises of significant savings.
Recent work by researchers at USC Schaeffer Center, the USC Price School of Public Policy and the USC School of Pharmacy have found that most consumers on high-deductible plans are not comparing prices to find the best deals on services or on prescription drugs, even though the research indicates that some patients could potentially save hundreds or thousands of dollars per year.

Unnecessary services add up to an estimated $750 billion in wasteful healthcare spending each year, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Examples of the unnecessary services in the list of 26 that the researchers tracked were T3 testing for hypothyroidism, a spinal injection for low-back pain and stress testing for stable coronary artery disease.

Patients on consumer-directed health plans share more costs for their care than patients on traditional plans as they pay a higher deductible. With the high-deductible plan, a patient can open a pre-taxed healthcare savings account and use it to pay for out-of-pocket medical services. This type of plan is often pitched as way to give consumers more skin in the game, presuming they will shop and compare prices for services or skip unnecessary care and therefore spend less.

Enrollment in these plans has risen dramatically in the last decade, with a nearly seven-fold increase. Only about 4 percent of Americans with employer-sponsored insurance were on a consumer-directed health plan in 2005, compared to about 30 percent today. The vast majority of individuals who obtained insurance under the Affordable Care Act are on consumer-directed health plans.

Patients are reducing their spending overall, but not for low-value services in particular — and medical providers also often lack incentives to curb spending on these services, which are frequently ineffective.

The study focused on 26 common, low-value services from various sources, including the Choosing Wisely campaign, national guidelines, peer-reviewed literature and professional consensus. Launched in 2012 by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation to raise awareness about unnecessary services, the Choosing Wisely campaign has compiled recommendations from more than 70 medical professional and specialty societies identifying common and wasteful medical tests, treatments and procedures whose use should be questioned or avoided.

While spending on unnecessary services did not significantly change after a patient switched plans, the high-deductible plan did result in an average, annual $231 decrease on outpatient spending.

Actuaries: Alexander-Murray won’t offset mandate repeal

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The American Academy of Actuaries is throwing some cold water on Republicans’ claims that they’ll offset the damage from repealing the ACA’s individual mandate by restoring funding for the law’s cost-sharing subsidies.

  • “While making cost-sharing reduction reimbursements to insurers … would offset premium increases due to the prior termination of those payments, it would not offset premium increases due to an elimination of the mandate,” the actuaries wrote in a letter yesterday.
  • This should not come as a surprise. This is hardly the first time nonpartisan experts have said the move to restore cost-sharing payments — a bill sponsored by Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray — would not make up for the effects of repealing the mandate. They are separate things.

The big question: Does Collins believe this analysis, and does she care? Collins has made two ACA-related demands — a vote on Alexander-Murray, and a vote to establish a new reinsurance fund — in return for her vote to repeal the individual mandate.

  • Plenty of experts have said Alexander-Murray wouldn’t do much.
  • Reinsurance would.
  • But it’s not clear either proposal can pass the House. If one of them can, it’s probably Alexander-Murray.
  • That leaves a distinct possibility that insurance markets will not actually see the stabilizing effects Collins is bargaining for.

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What all these health care mergers mean for patients

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The health care industry is on a mergers-and-acquisitions bender right now. But, as my colleague Bob Herman reports this morning, it’s not clear whether all of that consolidation will leave patients any better off.

  • Five proposed megamergers have been announced just within the past few weeks. They would create the top two largest non-profit hospital systems in the country. The proposed CVS-Aetna deal alone would be creating a giant pharmacy chain, clinic operator, pharmacy benefit manager and health insurer — all under one roof.

Why now? As more Baby Boomers age into Medicare and more low-income families gain coverage through the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, hospitals are taking on a lot more patients whose bills get paid by the government.

  • Merging into bigger, more concentrated health systems gives them more bargaining power with private insurance, where they can command higher rates than what they get from Medicare and Medicaid

Yes, but: The risk to the broader system is that health care companies might see savings from mergers, but people won’t feel the benefits.

  • “If you become too big, you don’t have the incentives to turn that into lower prices for consumers. That’s sort of the sticking point for when the merger gets out of hand for its size and scope,” says Tim Greaney, a former Department of Justice antitrust official who’s now a health law professor at the UC Hastings.

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Out-of-pocket health spending in 2016 increased at the fastest rate in a decade

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/out-of-pocket-health-spending-in-2016-increased-at-the-fastest-rate-in-a-decade/?utm_term=.42b85bdeba98

U.S. health care spending increased to $3.3 trillion in 2016, with out-of-pocket health care costs borne directly by consumers rising 3.9 percent — the fastest rate of growth since 2007.

The findings, published Wednesday by Health Affairs, are considered the authoritative breakdown of American health care spending and are prepared each year by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The overall rate of increase in health care spending experienced a slight slowdown over the previous year, driven in part by the expected moderation in growth after the expansion of insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act. There was also a sharp decrease in the growth of prescription drug expenditures, as hepatitis C treatment costs have declined and fewer patients are receiving them.

The slowdown in spending growth — a 4.3 percent increase in 2016, following a 5.8 percent growth the previous year — stemmed from changes in a broad array of health care sectors.

That ranged from slower growth in Medicaid spending after the surge in enrollment caused by the Affordable Care Act expansion, to a marked slowdown in prescription drug spending growth that had been pushed higher by the approval of a new, expensive treatment for hepatitis C in 2013.

A shift toward insurance plans that transfer more of the burden of health care costs onto patients helped fuel the rise in out-of-pocket costs. In 2016, 29 percent of people who receive insurance through employers were enrolled in high-deductible plans, up from 20 percent in 2014. The size of the deductibles also increased over this time period, a 12 percent increase in 2016 for individual plans, compared with a 7 percent increase in 2014.

Out-of-pocket spending grew the most on medical equipment and supplies and decreased slightly for prescription drugs, according to the analysis.

The most noticeable change was a big slowdown in prescription drug spending growth, which made up 10 percent of the total spending, or $328.6 billion. (That spending number does not include drugs administered by physicians or hospitals.)

That decrease highlights the effect that expensive new treatments used by large numbers of people can have on national spending. A new generation of expensive hepatitis C drugs drove national drug spending 12.4 percent higher in 2014 and 8.9 percent higher in 2015. In 2016, the prescription drug spending increased by 1.3 percent, closer to the rates in the years before the new drugs were approved.

The authors of the report attributed that trend not just to hepatitis C drugs. There were also fewer new, brand name drugs approved in 2016 — 22 new drugs, compared with 45 the previous year. Another factor was a slowdown in the growth of spending on insulin, a lifesaving drug for people with diabetes, in Medicare.

Insulin prices have been under intense scrutiny as drugmakers have increased the list prices of insulin while claiming the true cost to patients has remained flat due to discounts and rebates

Health care spending has been buffeted by unusual changes during the past decade. There was a historic slowdown in growth due to the Great Recession, and then the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of health insurance coverage fueled spending.

The authors said this year’s trend of slower growth could be a sign that things were returning to normal.

“Future health expenditure trends are expected to be mostly influenced by changes in economic conditions and demographics, as has historically been the case,” the authors wrote.

 

AARP: Congress must prevent ‘sudden cut’ to Medicare in 2018

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AARP: Congress must prevent ‘sudden cut’ to Medicare in 2018

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The AARP is urging House and Senate leaders to waive congressional rules so the Republican tax bill doesn’t trigger deep cuts to Medicare.

If Republicans pass their tax bill, which would add an estimated $1 trillion to the federal deficit, congressional “pay-as-you-go” rules would require an immediate $150 billion in mandatory spending cuts to offset the impact.

“The sudden cut to Medicare provider funding in 2018 would have an immediate and lasting impact, including fewer providers participating in Medicare and reduced access to care for Medicare beneficiaries,” AARP said in a letter sent to congressional leaders Thursday.

Under the bill, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare would be faced with a $25 billion cut in fiscal 2018.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have promised the cuts won’t happen.

In a joint statement sent just ahead of the Senate vote on the tax bill last week, Ryan and McConnell said there is “no reason to believe that Congress would not act again to prevent a sequester, and we will work to ensure these spending cuts are prevented.”

Lawmakers have voted numerous times in the past to waive the rule, and even House conservatives have said they’ll likely support a waiver once the tax bill passes.

“I can’t imagine any scenario where there’s not a waiver for PAYGO,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said Wednesday. “It’s using a hammer when maybe a scalpel would do.”

But in the Senate at least, Republicans will need the support of Democrats to waive the rules. So far, they have been reluctant to offer it.