Tag Archives: Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)

Uninsurance of children, parents inched back up in 2017, report finds

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https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/uninsurance-of-children-parents-inched-back-up-in-2017-report-finds/554590/

Dive Brief:

  • After improving for several years, insurance gains and participation in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program tilted downward in 2017, a new Urban Institute report shows.
  • In the first three years following implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the uninsurance rate dropped from 7% to 4.3% among children and from 17.6% to 11% among parents, or about 40% for both groups. In 2017, however, the children’s uninsurance rate inched back up to 4.6%, or an additional 281,000 uninsured children, and parents’ coverage rate stalled.
  • Uninsurance rates rose both in states with and without the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, but the increase was more pronounced in states without expansion programs.

Dive Insight:

The findings jibe with recent data from the Centers for Disease Control’s National Health Interview Survey, which showed more than 1.1 million Americans lost health coverage in 2018, pushing the total number of uninsured from 29.3 million in 2017 to 30.4 million last year. Among surveyed adults between 18 and 64 years old, 13.3% were uninsured, 19.4% had public health coverage and 68.9% had private coverage.

The trend coincides with Trump administration efforts to weaken the ACA by eliminating several mechanisms meant to stabilize payers participating in ACA exchanges and pushing stripped-down, noncompliant health plans. The result has been rising premiums and a resurgence in the number of uninsured.

Adding to uncertainty about the ACA’s future is the U.S. Department of Justice’s support for a Texas federal district court that ruled the law unconstitutional without its individual mandate penalty, which a Republican-led Congress removed in 2017. A previous Urban Institute report estimated up to 20 million Americans would lose health insurance if the lawsuit prevails — a majority of whom are currently covered through Medicaid expansions and ACA exchanges.

While the ACA remains in legal jeopardy, Democrats and presidential candidates are looking at ways to increase the numbers of insured Americans, from shoring up the ACA to implementing some type of single-payer system or “Medicaid for All.”

According to the Urban Institute, participation in Medicaid/CHIP among children increased from 88.7% in 2013 to 93.7% in 2016, and from 67.6% to 79.9% for parents. Those gains reversed in 2017, however, with Medicaid/CHIP participation dropping to 93.1% among children and remaining unchanged for parents.

Among those who did not enroll in Medicaid/CHIP in 2017, 2 million children and 1.7 million parents were eligible for the programs — versus 1.9 million and a steady 1.7 million, respectively, in 2016.

More than half of the uninsured children and parents who were eligible for the Medicaid/CHIP lived in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, according to combined 2016-2017 data.

Parents were more than twice as likely to be uninsured as children in 2017. For example, children’s uninsurance rate was less than 5% in most states and under 10% in nearly every state, while parents’ uninsurance was less than 5% in just four states and over 10% in close to half the states, the report says.

The decline in improvement was worse among certain subgroups. “In 2017, the uninsurance rate was nearly 6% or higher among adolescents, Hispanic and American Indian/Alaska Native children, citizen children with noncitizen parents, and noncitizen children,” according to the report. “And consistent with prior years, one in six parents or more who were ages 19 5o 24, Hispanic or American Indian/Alaska Native, below 100 percent of FPL [federal poverty level], receiving SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] benefits, or noncitizen were uninsured in 2017.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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https://www.axios.com/republicans-medicaid-affordable-care-act-expensive-d7057a8e-0a55-4f0d-906e-e42aa3f00ba9.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosvitals&stream=top

Illustration of a price tag hanging from an IV stand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

Safety-net providers operated with an average margin of 1.6% in 2017

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Image result for medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments

This is less than half their 2016 average and below the 7.8 percent average of other U.S. hospitals, according to the annual study.

Hospitals that serve vulnerable patients have much lower average margins that other providers, according to America’s Essential Hospitals.

The safety-net providers have persistently high levels of uncompensated and charity care that pushed average margins down to one-fifth that of other hospitals in 2017, according to the annual study, Essential Data: Our Hospitals, Our Patients. They operated with an average margin of 1.6 percent in 2017 — less than half their 2016 average and far below the 7.8 percent average of other U.S. hospitals, according to the data from Essential Hospitals’ 300 members.

While these hospitals represent about 5 percent of all U.S. hospitals, they provided 17.4 percent of all uncompensated care, or $6.7 billion, and 23 percent of all charity care, or $5.5 billion in 2017, the study said.

THE IMPACT

Amercia’s Essential Hospitals fears further financial pressure from $4 billion in federal funding cuts to disproportionate share hospitals slated to go into effect on October 1. This represents a third of current funding levels.

The DSH payments are statutorily required and are intended to offset hospitals’ uncompensated care costs. In 2017, Medicaid made a total of $18.1 billion in DSH payments, including $7.7 billion in state funds and $10.4 billion in federal funds, according to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, or MACPAC.

MACPAC recommends starting with cuts of $2 billion in the first year.

The association and other organizations have been urging Congress to stop or phase-in the cuts. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress must take action to ease the DSH cuts.

TREND

Since 1981, Medicaid DSH payments have helped offset essential hospitals’ uncompensated care costs.

The study data shows essential hospitals provide disproportionately high levels of uncompensated and charity care.

In 2017, three-quarters of essential hospitals’ patients were uninsured or covered by Medicaid or Medicare and 53 percent were racial or ethnic minorities. They served 360,000 homeless individuals, 10 million with limited access to healthy food, 23.9 million living below the poverty line, and 17.1 million without health insurance, the study said.

The association’s members averaged 17,000 inpatient discharges, or 3.1 times the volume of other acute-care hospitals. They operated 31 percent of level I trauma centers and 39 percent of burn care beds nationally.

ON THE RECORD

“Our hospitals do a lot with often limited resources, but this year’s Medicaid DSH cuts will push them to the breaking point if Congress doesn’t step in,” said association President and CEO Dr. Bruce Siegel. “Our hospitals are on the front lines of helping communities and vulnerable people overcome social and economic barriers to good health, and they do much of this work out of their own pocket. They do this because they know going outside their walls means healthier communities and lower costs through avoided admissions and ED visits.”

 

 

HOW SEN. ORRIN HATCH CHANGED AMERICA’S HEALTH CARE

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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/strategy/how-sen-orrin-hatch-changed-americas-health-care?utm_source=silverpop&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ENL_190103_LDR_BRIEFING_resend%20(1)&spMailingID=14894079&spUserID=MTY3ODg4NTg1MzQ4S0&spJobID=1560203883&spReportId=MTU2MDIwMzg4MwS2

How Sen. Orrin Hatch Changed America's Health Care

Utah’s Orrin Hatch is leaving the Senate, after 42 years. The Republican led bipartisan efforts to provide health care to more kids and AIDS patients. He also thrived on donations from the drug industry.

https://www.npr.org/player/embed/673851375/681125070

Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican retiring from 42 years in the Senate as a new generation is sworn in, leaves a long list of achievements in health care. Some were more controversial than others.

Hatch played key roles in shepherding the 1983 Orphan Drug Act to promote drug development for rare diseases, and the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, which helped create a national transplant registry. And in 1995, when many people with AIDS were still feeling marginalized by society and elected leaders, he testified before the Senate about reauthorizing funding for his Ryan White CARE Act to treat uninsured people who have HIV.

“AIDS does not play favorites,” Hatch told other senators. “It affects rich and poor, adults and children, men and women, rural communities and the inner cities. We know much, but the fear remains.”

Hatch, now 84, co-sponsored a number of bills with Democrats over the years, often with Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. The two men were sometimes called “the odd couple,” for their politically mismatched friendship.

In 1997, the two proposed a broad new health safety net for kids —the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

“This is an area the country has made enormous progress on, and it’s something we should all feel proud of — and Senator Hatch should too,” said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

Before CHIP was enacted, the number of uninsured children in America was around 10 million. Today, it’s under half that.

Hatch’s influence on American health care partly came from the sheer number of bills he sponsored — more than any other living lawmaker — and because he was chairman of several powerful Senate committees.

“History was on his side because the Republicans were in charge,” said Dr. David Sundwall, an emeritus professor in public health at the University of Utah and Hatch’s health director in the 1980s.

When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1981, the Senate became Republican-controlled for the first time in decades. Hatch was appointed chairman of what is now known as the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The powerful legislative group has oversight of the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

“He was virtually catapulted into this chairmanship role,” Sundwall said. “This is astonishing that he had chairmanship of an umbrella committee in his first term in the Senate.”

In 2011, Hatch was appointed to the influential Senate Finance Committee, where he later became chairman. There he helped oversee the national health programs Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP.

Hatch’s growing influence in Congress did not go unnoticed by health care lobbyists. According to the watchdog organization Center for Responsive Politics, in the past 25 years of political campaign funding, Hatch ranks third of all members of Congress for contributions from the pharmaceutical and health sector. (That’s behind Democratic senators who ran for higher office — President Barack Obama and presidential nominee Hillary Clinton).

“Clearly, he was PhRMA’s man on the Hill,” said Dr. Jeremy Greene, referring to the trade group that represents pharmaceutical companies. Green is a professor of the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Though Hatch did work to lower drug prices, Greene said, the senator’s record was mixed on the regulation of drug companies.

For example, an important piece of Hatch’s legislative legacy is the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act, drafted with then-Rep. Henry Waxman, an influential Democrat from California. While the law promoted the development of cheaper, generic drugs, it also rewarded brand-name drug companies by extending their patents on valuable medicines.

The law did spur sales of cheaper generics, Greene said. But drugmakers soon learned how to exploit the law’s weaknesses.

“The makers of brand-name drugs began to craft larger and larger webs of multiple patents around their drugs,” aiming to preserve their monopolies after the initial patent expired, Greene said.

Other brand-name drugmakers preserved their monopolies by paying makers of generics not to compete.

“These pay-for-delay deals effectively hinged on a part of the Hatch-Waxman Act,” Greene said.

Hatch also worked closely with the dietary supplement industry. The multibillion-dollar industry specializing in vitamins, minerals, herbs and other “natural” health products, is concentrated in his home state of Utah.

“There was really no place for these natural health products,” said Loren Israelsen, president of the United Natural Products Alliance and a Hatch staffer in the late 1970s.

As the industry grew, there was a debate over how to regulate it: Should it be more like food or like drugs? In 1994, Hatch sponsored the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, known as DSHEA, which treats supplements more like food.

“It was necessary to have someone who was a champion who would say, ‘All right, if we need to change the law, what does it look like,’ and ‘Let’s go,'” Israelsen said.

Some legislators and consumer advocacy groups wanted vitamins and other supplements to go through a tight approval process, akin to the testing the Food and Drug Administration requires of drugs. But DSHEA reined in the FDA, determining that supplements do not have to meet the same safety and efficacy standards as prescription drugs.

That legislative clamp on regulation has led to ongoing questions about whether dietary supplements actually work and concerns about how they interact with other medications patients may be taking.

DSHEA was co-sponsored by Democrat Tom Harkin, then a senator from Iowa.

While that kind of bipartisanship defined much of Hatch’s career, it has been less evident in recent years. He was strongly opposed to the Affordable Care Act, and in 2018 called supporters of the heath law among the “stupidest, dumb-ass people” he had ever met. (Hatch later characterized the remark as “a poorly worded joke.”)

In his farewell speech on the Senate floor in December, Hatch lamented the polarization that has overtaken Congress.

“Gridlock is the new norm,” he said. “Like the humidity here, partisanship permeates everything we do.”

 

 

Congressional Fight on DSH Set to Begin

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) jumped into the disproportionate-share hospital funding debate this week with the State Accountability, Flexibility, and Equity (SAFE) for Hospitals Act that would overhaul the billions distributed by the program. Florida receives one of the lowest allotments in the country the Rubio bill would tweak the DSH funding formula so a state’s allotment is based on its overall population of adults below poverty level leading to hospitals that care for higher amounts of poor patients receiving more money. Additionally, the bill would redefine the hospital costs that count as uncompensated care to include some outpatient physician and clinical services.

Under current law substansive DSH cuts go into place on Sept. 30, 2019 unless Congress acts. The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission discussed proposed recommendations on DSH allotment reductions at its December meeting which included –

  • Phasing in reductions more gradually over a longer period of time -$2B in FY 2020, $4B in FY 2021, $6B in FY 2022 and $8B a year in FYs 2023-2029;
  • Applying reductions to unspent DSH funding first; and
  • Distributing reductions in a way that gradually improves the relationship between DSH allotments and the number of non-elderly, low-income individuals in a state.

MACPAC The Commissioners are expected to vote on the recommendations at the January 24-25 meeting.

Click here for a summary of the Rubio bill and

here to view the MACPAC presentation.

Number of uninsured children increases for first time in a decade

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https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/418884-number-of-uninsured-children-increased-for-first-time-in-a-decade-during

Number of uninsured children increases for first time in a decade

The number of uninsured children in the U.S. increased for the first time in a decade, according to a new report that puts much of the blame on policies spearheaded by Republicans.

An estimated 3.9 million children did not have health insurance in 2017, an increase of 276,000 compared to the previous year, according to the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.

No state made statistically significant progress on children’s coverage last year, despite an improving economy and low unemployment rate, according to the report, which noted that the District of Columbia made substantive gains in 2017.

Researchers said the rising number for states was due to a variety of factors, though they said GOP-led states refusing to expand Medicaid played a major role, as well as Republican efforts in Congress to repeal ObamaCare and cap federal Medicaid funding.

Three-quarters of the children who lost coverage between 2016 and 2017 live in states that have not expanded Medicaid coverage to parents and other low-income adults, the report found. The uninsured rates for children in non-expansion states increased at almost triple the rate as states that have expanded Medicaid.

The report also noted that Congress eliminated the health law’s individual mandate and the Trump administration dramatically cut ObamaCare outreach and enrollment grants while shortening the open enrollment period.

“All of these changes in the national political and policy realm mark a sharp reversal after many years of successful efforts to reduce the uninsured rate for children and families,” the researchers wrote.

The report’s prognosis for the future was not encouraging.

“Barring new and serious efforts to get back on track, there is every reason to believe the decline in coverage is likely to continue and may get worse in 2018,” researchers concluded.

The number of uninsured children in the U.S. was particularly high in Florida and Texas, the two largest states that have not expanded Medicaid, according to the report.

Texas had an estimated 80,000 more children uninsured in 2017 than in 2016, and Florida had 37,000 more.

Researchers also pointed to President Trump‘s recent crackdown on immigration as a reason why the number of uninsured kids is rising.

One quarter of all children under 18 living in the United States have a parent who is an immigrant, according to the report. Several policies targeting immigrant communities, like the administration’s “public charge” proposal, are likely deterring parents from enrolling their eligible children in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, despite the fact that most of these children are U.S. citizens.

 

 

Forty Years of Winning Friends and Influencing People

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https://www.chcf.org/blog/forty-years-of-winning-friends-and-influencing-people/

An interview with former US Representative Henry Waxman of California.

Of the more than 12,000 Americans who have served in Congress since it convened in 1789, few have had careers as fruitful as Henry Waxman’s. Representing west Los Angeles and its surrounding areas for 40 years, Waxman, 78, left a remarkable imprint on US health policy. His manifold accomplishments were capped by the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010. A son of south-central Los Angeles, he worked at his father’s grocery store, earned a law degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, and in 1968 won a seat in the State Assembly. He was elected to the US House in 1974 in an era when bipartisanship was ordinary and health care had yet to become an overwhelming economic and political force in American life. Waxman was known in Congress for his persistence at wearing down opposition. Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming famously called him “tougher than a boiled owl” after negotiating the landmark Clean Air Act amendments of 1990. Waxman led efforts to ban smoking in public places and to require nutrition labels on food products. I talked with him recently about his experiences, the future of health policy, and the changing language of health reform. The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Q: In 1974, when Los Angeles voters first sent you to Washington, health policy wasn’t the ticket to political influence. You are a lawyer, not a doctor. What drew you to health care?

A: When I was first elected to the California State Assembly in 1968, I believed that if I specialized in a policy area I would have more impact than if I tried to be an expert on everything. Health policy fit my district in Los Angeles, and I could see that government needed to be involved in a whole range of decisions, from health care services to biomedical research to public health. I was chairman of the Assembly Committee on Health. I was elected to Congress in 1974 in a Democratic wave election. I wanted to get on a health policy committee, which was Energy and Commerce. Democrats picked up so many seats and there were so many committee vacancies that year that it was easy to claim one, and I got on that committee. Within four years there was a vacancy for chair of the health and environment subcommittee, and I stepped up to that. It gave me a lot more impact.

Q: What role do you think health care will play in the upcoming elections?

A: If the Democrats do as well as I expect and hope, it will be more because of what Trump was doing in the health area than anything else. Even though people value health care services and insurance, the idea that the president and the GOP wanted to take away health insurance and reduce benefits for people who needed it — that was something they didn’t expect and were angry about.

Q: Is it feasible to provide health coverage to everyone?

A: I have always felt we needed access to universal health coverage. It wasn’t until we got the ACA under Obama that we were able to narrow the gap of the uninsured — those who couldn’t get insurance through their jobs, who weren’t eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, who had preexisting conditions, or who couldn’t afford the premiums. The ACA helped people have access to an individual health policy by eliminating insurance company discrimination and giving a subsidy to those who couldn’t afford coverage. It wasn’t a perfect bill, but it was important. The idea that Republicans would come along and bring back preexisting conditions as a reason to deny people coverage is what drove enough GOP senators to stop the GOP repeal bill from going forward last year. We’ll see what they do by way of executive orders or through the courts to try to frustrate people’s ability to buy insurance.

The Republican ACA repeal bill last year was a real shock because they also wanted to repeal the Medicaid program and allow states to cut funds for people in nursing homes, people with disabilities, and low-income patients who rely so heavily on that program. And they had proposals to hurt Medicare that House Speaker Paul Ryan had been advancing. The American people do not want to deny others insurance coverage and access to health services.

Q: Bipartisanship has gone out of style. Can it be revived?

A: It doesn’t look very likely now, but I built my legislative career on the idea that there could be bipartisan consensus to move forward on legislation. All the big bills had bipartisan support. The only bill that got through on a strictly partisan basis was the Obamacare legislation, and I regretted that. The Republicans just wanted to denigrate it and scare people into believing the ACA would provide for death panels, hurt people, take away their insurance, and keep them from getting access to care. None of that was true.

Q: A growing number of Democrats want to establish a single-payer health care system for the state. Do you agree with them?

A: A lot of people mistake the phrase “single payer” with universal health coverage. While I share the passion of people who want to cover everybody, single payer is not a panacea. My goal is universal health coverage. The Republican attempt last year to repeal the ACA and send 32 million Americans into the ranks of the uninsured was an albatross around their necks.

But the Democrats could turn this winning issue into a loser if some make a single-payer bill such as Medicare for All into a litmus test. I cosponsored single-payer legislation in Congress with Senator Ted Kennedy, and I always sought to bring the nation closer to universal coverage. I authored laws to bring Medicaid to more children and to establish the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and I led the fight to enact the ACA. These bills were very important. If we passed something like a single-payer bill, which would be extremely hard to do, we would be passing up opportunities to make progress. A lot of people who want a Medicare for All bill don’t realize that those of us on Medicare have to pay for supplemental insurance, because Medicare doesn’t cover everything. Medicare doesn’t generally cover certain services like nursing home care, so to get help you have to impoverish yourself to qualify for Medicaid.

One organization is sending out letters telling voters to support a single-payer bill and you won’t have to pay anything anymore. We can’t afford something like that. Democrats can embrace a boundless vision for a health care future without being trapped by a rigid model of how to get there. We should increase the number of people with comprehensive health insurance and focus on lowering costs. People with Medicare don’t want to give it up. People have health insurance on the job.

I would rather expand on what we have and build it out to cover everybody.

People don’t seem to remember that Democrats could barely muster the votes for the ACA when we had 60 votes in the Senate and a 255–179 majority in the House. Even if we recapture Congress and the presidency, I don’t think we would get a Medicare for All bill passed. It would require such a high tax increase that people would be absolutely shocked.

Q: What would be the national impact of California adopting a universal coverage plan?

A: Californian progress would be a model for the rest of the country, and we would be doing what’s right for the people of California who don’t have access to coverage. I think California is a trendsetter — for good and for bad. Proposition 13 and term limits started in California and spread to other states, and I think they have been a disservice. We’ve also done a lot of good things in California, and the rest of the country follows those things as well.

People who try to marginalize California do so at their own risk. People around the country look at California as a leader. California embraced the ACA, expanded Medicaid, and has been moving forward on making sure our public health care system is reforming itself to represent the needs for population health care and to ensure that uninsured low-income patients get access to decent, good-quality health care.

Q: More states are adopting work requirements in Medicaid. Do you think that will become the standard nationwide?

A: Work requirements are inconsistent with the Medicaid law. We’re talking about making people go to work to get health care when they’re sick. I just don’t think it makes sense. The courts may throw it out, and if not, at some point there will be a reaction against it, and it will be repealed by a future Congress.

Q: Some see parallels between the conduct of tobacco companies and opioid makers. Do you think “Big Pharma” will be held to account like “Big Tobacco?”

A: In the difficult fight against big tobacco, one of the lessons we learned was that even an extremely powerful group like the tobacco industry could be beaten if you keep pushing back. Even though there was overwhelming public support for regulation of tobacco, it took until 2009 before we could enact tobacco regulation by giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to act. In the meantime, there were lawsuits by states to recover money they spent under Medicaid programs to cope with the harm from smoking. With opioids, there will be more and more lawsuits against distributors and manufacturers whose actions resulted in deaths of people from opioid addiction. Congress now is grappling with many bills to help people who are addicted, to prevent addiction from spreading further, and to restrict the ability to get the drug product. I’m optimistic we can come to terms with this crisis.

Q: What have you been doing since retiring from Congress?

A: I wanted to stay in the DC area near my son, Michael Waxman, and his family. He had a traditional public relations firm and he asked me to join him. In the health area, we represent Planned Parenthood in California, public hospitals in California, community health centers at the national level, and hospitals that get 340b drug discounts because they serve many low-income patients. We have foundation grants to work on problems of high pharmaceutical prices, and foundation grants to have a program to make sure women know about the whole range of health services available to them for free under the ACA. I enjoy working with my son and pursuing causes I would have pursued as a member of Congress.

 

 

 

Five Worrisome Trends in Healthcare

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https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/healthpolicy/72001?pop=0&ba=1&xid=fb-md-pcp&trw=no

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A reckoning is coming, outgoing BlueCross executive says.

A reckoning is coming to American healthcare, said Chester Burrell, outgoing CEO of the CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield health plan, here at the annual meeting of the National Hispanic Medical Association.

Burrell, speaking on Friday, told the audience there are five things physicians should worry about, “because they worry me”:

1. The effects of the recently passed tax bill. “If the full effect of this tax cut is experienced, then the federal debt will go above 100% of GDP [gross domestic product] and will become the highest it’s been since World War II,” said Burrell. That may be OK while the economy is strong, “but we’ve got a huge problem if it ever turns and goes back into recession mode,” he said. “This will stimulate higher interest rates, and higher interest rates will crowd out funding in the federal government for initiatives that are needed,” including those in healthcare.

Burrell noted that 74 million people are currently covered by Medicaid, 60 million by Medicare, and 10 million by the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), while another 10 million people are getting federally subsidized health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) insurance exchanges. “What happens when interest’s demand on federal revenue starts to crowd out future investment in these government programs that provide healthcare for tens of millions of Americans?”

2. The increasing obesity problem. “Thirty percent of the U.S. population is obese; 70% of the total population are either obese or overweight,” said Burrell. “There is an epidemic of diabetes, heart disease, and coronary artery disease coming from those demographics, and Baby Boomers will see these things in full flower in the next 10 years as they move fully into Medicare.”

3. The “congealing” of the U.S. healthcare system. This is occurring in two ways, Burrell said. First, “you’ll see large integrated delivery systems [being] built around academic medical centers — very good quality care [but] 50%-100% more expensive than the community average.”

To see how this affects patients, take a family of four — a 40-year-old dad, 33-year-old mom, and two teenage kids — who are buying a health insurance policy from CareFirst via the ACA exchange, with no subsidy. “The cost for their premium and deductibles, copays, and coinsurance [would be] $33,000,” he said. But if all of the care were provided by academic medical centers? “$60,000,” he said. “What these big systems are doing is consolidating community hospitals and independent physician groups, and creating oligopolies.”

Another way the system is “congealing” is the emergence of specialty practices that are backed by private equity companies, said Burrell. “The largest urology group in our area was bought by a private equity firm. How do they make money? They increase fees. There is not an issue on quality but there is a profound issue on costs.”

4. The undermining of the private healthcare market. “Just recently, we have gotten rid of the individual mandate, and the [cost-sharing reduction] subsidies that were [expected to be] in the omnibus bill … were taken out of the bill,” he said. And state governments are now developing alternatives to the ACA such as short-term duration insurance policies — originally designed to last only 3 months but now being pushed up to a year, with the possibility of renewal — that don’t have to adhere to ACA coverage requirements, said Burrell.

5. The lackluster performance of new payment models. “Despite the innovation fostering under [Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation] programs — the whole idea was to create a series of initiatives that might show the wave of the future — ACOs [accountable care organizations] and the like don’t show the promise intended for them, and there is no new model one could say is demonstrably more successful,” he said.

“So beware — there’s a reckoning coming,” Burrell said. “Maybe change occurs only when there is a rip-roaring crisis; we’re coming to it.” Part of the issue is cost: “As carbon dioxide is to global warming, cost is to healthcare. We deal with it every day … We face a future where cutbacks in funding could dramatically affect accessibility of care.”

“Does that mean we move to move single-payer, some major repositioning?” he said. “I don’t know, but in 35 years in this field, I’ve never experienced a time quite like this … Be vigilant, be involved, be committed to serving these populations.”

 

 

Plan to Cut $15B in Spending Squeaks Through House

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https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2018-06-07/house-takes-up-trump-sponsored-plan-to-cut-15b-in-spending

Image result for CHIP Spending Cuts

The House on Thursday only narrowly passed a White House plan to cut almost $15 billion in unused government money, a closer-than-expected tally on legislation that’s designed to demonstrate fiscal discipline in Washington even though it wouldn’t have much of an impact on spiraling deficits.

The measure, which passed 210-206, would take a mostly symbolic whack at government spending because it would basically eliminate leftover funding that wouldn’t have been spent anyway. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it faces long odds.

The deficit is on track to exceed $800 billion this year despite a strong economy. Republicans controlling Congress are not attempting to pass a budget this year.

The package of so-called rescissions has been embraced by GOP conservatives upset by passage in March of a $1.3 trillion catchall spending bill that they say was too bloated. More pragmatic Republicans on Capitol Hill’s powerful Appropriations panels aren’t keen on the measure since it would eliminate accounting moves they routinely use to pay for spending elsewhere.

The measure includes $4 billion in cuts to a defunct loan program designed to boost fuel-efficient, advanced-technology vehicles, rescissions of various agriculture grant programs, and cuts to conservation programs at the Department of Agriculture, among others.

While Democrats blasted the cuts, the real objection to some of them, such as $7 billion from popular Children’s Health Insurance Program funding, is that it would take that money off the table so it couldn’t be used later as it was in the earlier spending bill. The CHIP cuts wouldn’t affect enrollment in the program, which provides health care to children from low-income families that don’t qualify for Medicaid.

“Targeting CHIP for a rescission prevents Congress from reinvesting in other priorities like child and maternal health, early childhood education, biomedical research and our community health centers,” said New York Rep. Nita Lowey, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.

Some GOP moderates also worry that they’re casting a difficult-to-explain vote to cut CHIP funding in the run-up to November’s midterm elections.

“I don’t think the vote’s intended for people in swing districts,” said Rep. Ryan Costello, R-Pa. Nineteen Republicans, mostly moderates, opposed the bill. No Democrats voted for it.

President Donald Trump is the first President to employ the so-called rescissions tool since the Clinton administration. The obscure process is one of the few ways around the Senate filibuster, though other parliamentary problems could await in that chamber — even if resistance from moderates and Republicans on the Appropriations Committee can be overcome.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office weighed in Thursday to estimate that the measure — pushed largely by White House budget director Mick Mulvaney and No. 2 House Republican Kevin McCarthy of California — would only cut the deficit by $1.1 billion over the coming decade. That’s because most of the cuts wouldn’t affect the deficit at all since CBO doesn’t give deficit credit for cutting money that would never have been spent.

Trump proposed the measure last month, but it was slow to come to a vote because some Republicans came out against it.

The White House submitted a revised package of cuts Tuesday, removing politically troublesome proposals to cut money to fight Ebola funds and to rebuild watersheds damaged by Superstorm Sandy. Trump weighed in soon after to urge Republicans to pass the plan.

It’s still unclear whether it will pass in the Senate, where pragmatic-minded Republicans are focusing on trying to get the troubled process for handling annual appropriations back on track on a bipartisan basis.

The White House and tea party lawmakers upset by the budget-busting “omnibus” bill have rallied around the plan, aiming to show that Republicans are taking on out-of-control spending.

“If this body cannot be trusted to reclaim money that will not or cannot be used for its intended purpose, can we really be trusted to save money anywhere else?” McCarthy said.

While some Democrats opposed the spending cuts as heartless, others mostly mocked the legislation.

“After spending nearly $2 trillion on tax cuts for the super-rich and blowing up the deficit, the Majority’s bill is like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. “Republicans are trying to trick the American people into thinking they care about fiscal responsibility. They’re not fooling anyone.”

 

Trump Proposing Billions in Spending Cuts to Congress

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https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2018-05-07/trump-sending-spending-cuts-of-up-to-15b-to-congress

Image result for children's health insurance program

The Trump administration is unveiling a multibillion-dollar roster of proposed spending cuts but is leaving this year’s $1.3 trillion catchall spending bill alone.

The cuts wouldn’t have much impact, however, since they come from leftover funding from previous years that wouldn’t be spent anyway.

The White House said it is sending the so-called rescissions package to lawmakers Tuesday. Administration officials, who required anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said the package proposes killing $15 billion in unused funds. A senior official said about $7 billion would come from the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, which provides health care to kids from low-income families, though that official stressed the cuts won’t have a practical impact on the popular program.

The administration is trying to use its authority to prod Congress to “rescind” spending approved years ago, but even if the package is approved it would only have a tiny impact on the government’s budget deficit, which is on track to total more than $800 billion this year. Some of the cuts wouldn’t affect the deficit at all since budget scorekeepers don’t give credit for rescinded money that they don’t think would have ever been spent.

For instance, more than $4 billion in cuts to a loan program designed to boost fuel-efficient, advanced-technology vehicles wouldn’t result in fewer loans since the loans are no longer being made. And $107 million worth of watershed restoration money from the 2013 Superstorm Sandy aid bill is going unused because local governments aren’t stepping up with matching funds. Another $252 million is left over from the 2015 fight against Ebola, which has been declared over.

Still, the cuts, if enacted by Congress, would take spending authority off the table so it couldn’t be tapped by lawmakers for other uses in the future. The catchall spending bill, for instance, contained $7 billion in cuts to CHIP that were used elsewhere to boost other programs.

“This is money that was never going to be spent,” a senior administration official said on a press call ahead of Tuesday’s submission. “The only thing it would be used for is offsets down the line.”

Democrats have supported such cuts in the past, eager to grab easy budget savings to finance new spending. But some Democrats howled over the White House proposal anyway.

“Let’s be honest about what this is: President Trump and Republicans in Congress are looking to tear apart the bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), hurting middle-class families and low-income children,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Pressure from party conservatives to increase cuts in a tentative $11 billion proposal contributed to a delay from Monday’s original release date.

The White House and tea party lawmakers upset by the budget-busting “omnibus” bill have rallied around the plan, aiming to show that Republicans are taking on out-of-control spending. The administration says it will propose cuts to the omnibus measure later in the year.

The spending cuts are also a priority for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who likens them to “giving the bloated federal budget a much-needed spring cleaning.” But while the package may pass the House it faces a more difficult path — and potential procedural roadblocks — in the Senate.

McCarthy wants to succeed soon-to-retire House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and some of his allies view the project as a way to improve his standing with fractious GOP conservatives who blocked his path to the speakership in 2015.

The proposal has already had a tortured path even before its unveiling. More pragmatic Republicans, including the senior ranks of the powerful House and Senate Appropriations committees, rebelled against the measure. They argued that it would be breaking a bipartisan budget pact just weeks after it was negotiated. In response, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney cleansed the measure of cuts to the huge omnibus bill.

Last month, Mulvaney told lawmakers the plan could have totaled $25 billion or so. Now he says he’s planning to submit several different packages of spending cuts — and it’s likely they’ll get more conservative with each new proposal.

Either way, the idea faces a challenging path in Congress — particularly the Senate, where a 51-49 GOP majority leaves little room for error even though budget rules permit rescissions measures to advance free of the threat of Democratic filibusters. But the cuts to the popular children’s health insurance program probably could still be filibustered because they are so-called mandatory programs rather than annual appropriations.