Obamacare Faces New Challenge as the Uninsured Rate Plateaus

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/11/03/Obamacare-Faces-New-Challenge-Uninsured-Rate-Plateaus

Amid the administration’s latest drive to sign up millions of Americans for Obamacare coverage, a new government study warns that the uninsured rate may have plateaued after years of dramatic decline.

There were roughly 28 million uninsured Americans during the first six months of this year, a significant change from the 48 million consumers who lacked coverage at the time of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Government-subsidized health insurance policies for low and middle-income people, along with an expansion of the Medicaid program in more than half of the states, have helped more than 20 million uninsured people obtain coverage.

The Impact of Obamacare, in Four Maps

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Three years into the Affordable Care Act, there remain places where many people still lack health insurance. But their share keeps shrinking.

The share of people without health insurance keeps falling.

Since 2013, when the major provisions of Obamacare went into effect, the uninsured rate has fallen in every state. And some states that you might not expect have led the way.

The news about the Affordable Care Act has been grim lately: The price of health plans in new marketplaces is up, and choice is declining in many places. But amid the difficulties, new data highlight the law’s effectiveness in getting coverage for millions of Americans.

Over all, the gains are substantial: a seven-percentage-point drop in the uninsured rate for adults. But there remain troublesome regional patterns. Many people in the South and the Southwest still don’t have a reliable way to pay for health care, according to the new, detailed numbers from a pair of groups closely tracking enrollment efforts. Those patterns aren’t an accident. As our maps show, many of the places with high uninsured rates had poor coverage before the Affordable Care Act passed. They tend to be states with widespread poverty and limited social safety nets. Look at Mississippi and Texas, for example.

But many of the places that have reduced their uninsured rates the most had similar characteristics in 2013. Look at Kentucky and Arkansas. Over the years, you can see them diverge sharply from their neighbors.

 

Big Changes and Big Risks Are Ahead for Health Policy

http://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2016/11/09/big_changes_and_big_risks_are_ahead_for_health_policy__110237.html?utm_campaign=KHN%3A+Daily+Health+Policy+Report&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=37390717&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_CzB7SB8_jTflW9iZbujhPgbEgYoEGH0CmjnZCWfYQ6OhRFxv03I_g24L5CSEuvETzsbKwqacigRbc9C9fAU0zdkkgyw&_hsmi=37390717

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The election outcome itself could create more problems for the ACA. The insurance plans sold on the law’s exchanges have already experienced substantial losses due to adverse selection, leading many insurance companies to pull back on their participation. The prospect of a Trump administration steering ACA implementation may be enough to convince some of the insurers still offering products on the exchanges in 2017 to rethink their plans. If more insurance companies head for the exits, the exchanges could become even less stable than they already are.

The “replace” part of “repeal and replace” has always been the tricky part for ACA opponents, and that will also be true for the incoming Trump administration. During the campaign, Trump offered only the vaguest outline of a plan that wouldn’t come close to serving as a starting point for a workable proposal. The ACA, for all of its problems, brought many low-income households into insurance coverage, through an expansion of the Medicaid program and through heavy subsidization of the insurance plans offered on the exchanges. Unless Trump wants to preside over a massive increase in the number of Americans without health insurance during his presidency, he will have to offer a plan that ensures households with low incomes can secure health insurance in some new way.

Analysis: Time for GOP to prove it has a better plan for healthcare reform

http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/analysis-time-for-gop-to-prove-it-has-a-better-plan-for-healthcare-reform?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal&mrkid=959610&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTnpkaFpqRm1ZVEZpWkdZMiIsInQiOiJxY1NBT1ZDbGdDQWsxVzRQQ21iOVwvcEVkOFdDVTBIUG9hZWllQ0tiYmFuM2lUVU52Y2JGWkxnNW9BWDJhTWNZSTVTR2QwVmdTYWdIQkFPWGdxZ3FRWlwvRXVuSFFvZ2pKa3NaTUlwU0M1YmVJPSJ9

With Donald Trump headed to the White House and his party firmly in control of Congress, Republicans will finally have a chance to prove what they’ve been saying all along: that they can produce a better version of healthcare reform than the Affordable Care Act.

It’s clear that the ACA is as imperiled as it has ever been. Trump has fervently vowed to repeal it–and with Republican control of both chambers of Congress, he may well get his wish. After all, the law’s most visible component, the exchanges, are on shaky ground as it is, with premiums rising and some health insurers retreating from the marketplaces.

Plus, President Barack Obama’s last attempt at convincing Republicans to work on fixing the ACA–not repealing it–fell on deaf ears even before the party’s resounding victory Tuesday.

What gets lost in all the talk about the ACA’s uncertain future, though, is the fact that while some insurers have struggled to make a profit in the individual marketplaces, there are other aspects of the law to which they have become quite attached.

Take Medicaid expansion, an idea championed by Democrats (and even once embraced by Vice President-Elect Mike Pence) that has been a boon to insurance companies in the form of lucrative managed care contracts. Some companies that specialize in slimmed-down Medicaid plans have also thrived on the exchanges where others have floundered.

Then there’s the ACA’s provisions that encourage the transition to value-based payments, which insurers have embraced and largely retooled their business models to reflect. Accountable care organizations, for example, have sprung up like wildfire, producing promising results for some companies.

A wholesale repeal of the ACA would also erase the law’s historic gains in reducing the uninsured rate. Though many of the newly insured have turned out to be costlier to cover than expected, such a move would still rob insurers of millions of new customers.

The question, then, becomes what will replace the law–and that’s where it gets interesting.

Trump has a plan, but it is short on details. Perhaps most visibly, he has advocated for selling insurance across state lines–a timeworn GOP talking point that many experts agree is not feasible. He would also repeal Medicaid expansion and convert Medicaid federal matching funds into a block grant, the latter of which would drastically cut Medicaid funding and coverage.

One analysis from The Commonwealth Fund says that his plan could add nearly 20 million peopleto the ranks of the uninsured, and even more if his Medicaid proposals come to fruition.

California Faces Major Reversal If Trump, Congress Scrap Health Law

California Faces Major Reversal If Trump, Congress Scrap Health Law

Attendees speak with heath care volunteers during the WeConnect Health Enrollment Information & Wellness Event in Oakland, California, U.S., on Saturday, Sept. 21, 2013. The battle over Obamacare is taking on political importance as Democrats hope a successful roll-out among Hispanics will further bind those voters to the Democratic Party and undermine Republican efforts to build more support before the 2016 presidential election. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

California has a lot to lose if President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress fulfill their campaign pledge to repeal Obamacare.

The Golden State fully embraced the Affordable Care Act by expanding Medicaid coverage for the poor and creating its own health insurance exchange for about 1.4 million enrollees. Supporters held California up as proof the health law could work as intended.

But now President Barack Obama’s signature law is in serious jeopardy and California officials are left wondering what Republicans in Washington may put in its place.

“There is no doubt that Obamacare is dead,” said Robert Laszewski, a health care consultant and expert on the California insurance market. “The only question is just exactly how Republicans will get rid of it.”

Health policy experts don’t expect Republicans to immediately kick millions of people off their insurance policies. Instead, they predict lawmakers may repeal parts of the law and allow for some transition period for consumers while a replacement plan is put together.

Still, the personal and financial impact for the state could be jarring. The number of uninsured Californians would more than double to 7.5 million people if the Affordable Care Act was repealed, according to a recent study by the Urban Institute.

Researchers also said California stands to lose an estimated $15 billion annually in federal funding for Medicaid expansion and insurance subsidies — more than any other state. That loss of federal money would make it difficult for California to pursue health reform on its own.

Winners and losers in the health-care industry under President Trump

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/09/winners-and-losers-in-the-health-care-industry-under-president-trump/?utm_campaign=CHL%3A+Daily+Edition&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=37396635&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_aZfGmLhlqwRrHfyWGaWVnP2SQe2RHw8m3kbimVOST7YMyMDvZ_OTnMxlqsd-LmZGL6bFWQzYvKA4rnjFsD0fmc46A2Q&_hsmi=37396635

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With much about President-elect Donald Trump’s health-care agenda still unclear, the health-care industry’s initial response to his election has been scattered. Hospital stocks were down. Health insurers’ stock prices were mixed. Pharmaceutical and biotech stocks, on the other hand, got a big bump.

Trump’s clearest policy position in health care has been his commitment to repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with another policy. But the responses to his election varied in large part because the details of exactly what would replace the Affordable Care Act and how that transition would occur have been vague. Without knowing those details, it’s hard for investors to have a clear response, said Benjamin Isgur, a leader in the PwC Health Research Institute.

“These health organizations are like large ships, and you can’t turn them on a dime,” Isgur said. “When you think back to what it took to get ready for the ACA, for many health-care companies, it was two to three years of developing plans and provider networks and marketing plans. . . . There’s a lot of work that is required to implement any new program.”

 

The 2016 Election Reveals The Differences On Health Care Are Deeper Than Ever

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2016/11/07/the-2016-election-reveals-the-differences-on-health-care-are-deeper-than-ever/

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We are nearing the grand finale of our long and disheartening election opera, one we dare not ignore because the outcomes matter so much. While the election results will not be determined by public reactions to the Affordable Care Act, the ACA’s fate will be mightily determined by Tuesday’s outcomes. What have we learned about our collective health future over the past 18 months and what might this mean for our health system’s future?

Public Opinion On Health Reform Is As Frozen Today As It Was In Spring, 2015

Kaiser monthly tracking polls show reliably unfavorable attitudes toward the ACA, slightly beating favorables, and stuck since 2014 in 40 percent purgatory. The advantages millions of Americans feel from ACA insurance coverage expansions and other access reforms are balanced by those who now blame the ACA for everything bad that happens in health care. The misnamed Pottery Barn rule—“if you break it, you own it”—applies here even though the dish was broken well before the ACA. Beyond this, if there is one thing on which both sides of the new Republican divide concur, it is a deep hostility towards ObamaCare. The election cycle seems to have only hardened these views.

Uninsured In Coal Country: Desperate Americans Still Turn To Volunteer Clinics

http://khn.org/news/uninsured-in-coal-country-desperate-americans-still-turn-to-volunteer-clinics/

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Six years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and despite 20 million more Americans gaining health insurance, considerable gaps in health care remain.

The decision by states like Virginia not to expand Medicaid and the lack of dental and vision coverage even for those with insurance have meant that the demand for RAM’s free mobile clinics has stayed strong.

California’s Drug Price Initiative: Will Voters ‘Send A Signal To Washington’?

California’s Drug Price Initiative: Will Voters ‘Send A Signal To Washington’?

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This year, Mary O’Connor and her father made voting a family affair.

O’Connor’s father is a Vietnam veteran, so she was especially interested in his views on Proposition 61, a California ballot measure that would peg the state’s payments for prescription drugs to prices paid by the Department of Veterans Affairs. It’s widely believed the federal program for military personnel gets some of the deepest discounts in the country.

“We researched it a lot,” said O’Connor, a 24-year-old from Sacramento. Both decided to vote yes because drug prices are “ridiculous” and need to be reined in, she said. “We have seen that things cannot remain the way they are.”

The measure faces strong opposition from the pharmaceutical industry, which has poured at least $109 million into defeating it. In addition, some state policy experts and consumer advocates say the measure may not save taxpayers or patients any money, and could even do more harm than good. Many veterans’ groups have voiced opposition as well, saying the initiative will raise VA drug spending, but proponents have support from some veterans as well.

But these warnings haven’t swayed — or reached — voters who want lawmakers to just do something to lower drug prices.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has taken up their cause, suggesting passage of Proposition 61 is important to the nation as a whole.

Clinton vs. Trump: 5 critical election issues

http://managedhealthcareexecutive.modernmedicine.com/managed-healthcare-executive/news/hillary-vs-trump-5-critical-election-issues?cfcache=true&ampGUID=A13E56ED-9529-4BD1-98E9-318F5373C18F&rememberme=1&ts=25102016

While Hillary Clinton vows to forge ahead with Obamacare if she is elected president, Donald Trump would scrap it altogether. The end results would be two very different forms of healthcare, and industry leaders have much to consider.

Brill“Many different factors are weighing on managed care executives such as the costs of pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and devices; the impact of consolidation amongst hospitals, physicians, health plans; and the losses in the exchange marketplace,” says Managed Healthcare Executive editorial advisor Joel V. Brill, MD, chief medical officer, Predictive Health, LLC, which partners with stakeholders to improve coverage of value-driven care. “With each of these factors, plans can, at least at a high level, make some educated guesses about the relative risk of each factor and impact to the bottom line.”

The election results, however, are much less certain, which from a risk perspective, weighs heavily on the minds of healthcare executives, Brill says. “How can you plan for business knowing that whatever you are doing currently could be upended in the beginning of November?”

To help provide some clarity, Managed Healthcare Executive identified five of the top industry issues, reviewed the candidates’ platforms for each, and asked industry experts to weigh in.