Tag Archives: Health Policy

AHCA Defeat Is Not the End of Repeal Efforts, Analysts Say

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http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/health-plans/ahca-defeat-not-end-repeal-efforts-analysts-say

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The Trump administration will likely chip away at healthcare reform through administrative actions to reduce subsidies and weaken health insurance exchanges.

he American Health Care Act (AHCA) may have been scrapped, but that doesn’t mark the end of efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Instead, opponents will likely take a piecemeal approach to dismantling the ACA through administrative action, analysts said.

The Trump administration is unlikely to renew its push to repeal and replace the ACA through a single bill like the AHCA, but may attempt to water down elements of healthcare reform through administrative actions designed to reduce federal subsidies and weaken health insurance exchanges.

The War Isn’t Over
“This is an enormous, significant defeat, but I don’t think the war on the ACA is over yet,” said Gerald Kominski, PhD, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

“Of course, the White House can disrupt the Affordable Care Act by issuing regulations that destabilize the market and make it more difficult to renew [coverage] or enroll for the first time.”

In January, the Trump administration took actions along those lines when it cut federal funds designed to help state health exchanges advertise and reach consumers with notices about the annual deadline for open enrollment.

The Trump administration could attempt to reduce or eliminate federal subsidies and take other actions to weaken state and federal health insurance exchanges, said Micah Weinberg, president of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.

“First, the Trump administration needs to decide whether they want to burn down the house we’re all living in through regulatory actions that will end the viability of the exchanges,” said Weinberg. “If they want to destroy the thing, they can. So the ACA is very much not out of the woods.”

 

The Doctor Is In. Co-Pay? $40,000

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For five-figure annual fees, boutique medical services offer the wealthiest Americans the chance to cut the line and receive the best treatment.

When John Battelle’s teenage son broke his leg at a suburban soccer game, naturally the first call his parents made was to 911. The second was to Dr. Jordan Shlain, the concierge doctor here who treats Mr. Battelle and his family.

“They’re taking him to a local hospital,” Mr. Battelle’s wife, Michelle, told Dr. Shlain as the boy rode in an ambulance to a nearby emergency room in Marin County. “No, they’re not,” Dr. Shlain instructed them. “You don’t want that leg set by an E.R. doc at a local medical center. You want it set by the head of orthopedics at a hospital in the city.”

Within minutes, the ambulance was on the Golden Gate Bridge, bound for California Pacific Medical Center, one of San Francisco’s top hospitals. Dr. Shlain was there to meet them when they arrived, and the boy was seen almost immediately by an orthopedist with decades of experience.

For Mr. Battelle, a veteran media entrepreneur, the experience convinced him that the annual fee he pays to have Dr. Shlain on call is worth it, despite his guilt over what he admits is very special treatment.

“I feel badly that I have the means to jump the line,” he said. “But when you have kids, you jump the line. You just do. If you have the money, would you not spend it for that?”

Increasingly, it is a question being asked in hospitals and doctor’s offices, especially in wealthier enclaves in places like Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and New York. And just as a virtual velvet rope has risen between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else on airplanes, cruise ships and amusement parks, widening inequality is also transforming how health care is delivered.

San Francisco’s universal health care plan eyed as model for California

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San Francisco’s universal health care plan eyed as model for California

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Maria Consuelo believes she’s alive today because of a groundbreaking program this left-leaning city created a decade ago – one that guarantees health coverage to every one of its 864,000 residents.

It’s made San Francisco the only place in the country where truly universal health coverage exists, similar to what’s available in every other developed nation. Called Healthy San Francisco, it offers health care to those who can’t afford private insurance and are ineligible for other government health programs.

In Consuelo’s case, she visited a government-funded clinic in the fall of 2015 and told a doctor she had pain in her pelvis. Tests later showed cancer in her ovaries, leading to successful surgery to remove them in January 2016.

“This law really helped me,” Consuelo, a 55-year-old mother of five grown children, said while waiting to pick up some medication last week at San Francisco General Hospital. “If it could help others, that would be great.”

A similar thought is percolating in the mind of Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who helped implement the plan when he was San Francisco’s mayor.

Now, two years after he launched his campaign to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown, Newsom has been wondering: Would such a program work in every county in the Golden State?

His suggestion comes at a time when proposals for universal health care are receiving a surprising amount of attention. Last week, Sens. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, and Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, unveiled details of their bill to create a single-payer system that would cover all California residents – just a few days after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders vowed to introduce a bill to launch a similar system nationwide.

Ironically, all of the universal health care buzz is coming after the GOP’s plan to replace the Affordable Care Act with a bare-bones substitute plan collapsed. The Congressional Budget Office had estimated that the Republican plan would have decreased the federal deficit by more than $300 billion, but increased the ranks of uninsured Americans by 24 million by 2026.

But Republicans in Congress are still vowing to chip away — if not replace — the law, commonly called “Obamacare,” which has insured five million Californians since 2014, bringing down the state’s uninsured rate from 17 percent to 7.1 percent in just three years.

Trump Budget, Revised AHCA, Credit Negatives for NFP Hospitals

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The one-two punch of massive cuts to Medicaid that are proposed in both the new budget and the House Republicans’ revised American Healthcare Act would result in cuts of close to $1 trillion over 10 years, analysis shows.

Cutting Medicaid by more than $860 million over the next decade would be a credit negative for states and not-for-profit hospitals, both of which would be left scrambling for alternative funding to cover the loss, according to a new report from Moody’s Investors Service.

Last week the Trump administration unveiled a budget proposal that includes $610 billion in cuts to core Medicaid services, and an additional $250 million in reductions to Medicaid expansion programs created under the Affordable Care Act.

The following day, the Congressional Budget Office released its scoring of the revised American Health Care Act – the Republican plan to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and estimated that it would reduce Medicaid spending by $834 million through 2026.

“The proposals significantly change the longstanding Medicaid financing system and are credit negative for states and not-for-profit hospitals,” Moody’s said in an issues brief.

For states that don’t have the luxury of ignoring budget imbalances, the changes would increase pressure to either kick people off Medicaid, increase the state share of Medicaid funding, or cut payments to hospitals and other providers, Moody’s says.

Hospitals, particularly those serving a high mix of Medicaid patients, could expect to see reimbursement cuts and more cases of uncompensated care as Medicaid patients lose the coverage they’d gained under the ACA’s expansion.

Medicaid is already a significant budget burden for states, consuming between 7% to 34% of state revenue and averaging 16%.

Under the ACA, bad debt expense at not-for-profit hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid eligibility declined on average by 15% to 20% since 2014, enhancing these hospitals’ cash flow. Similarly, the gains in insurance coverage lowered the nationwide uninsured rate to approximately 11%, with uninsured rates even lower in states that expanded their Medicaid rolls, Moody’s says.

“Although the budget would give states limited new flexibility to adjust their Medicaid programs, the measure overall reflects a significant cost shift away from federal funding to states,” Moody’s says. “This cost shift is significant and would force states to make difficult decisions about safety-net spending for hospitals that serve large numbers of indigent patients.”

1 in 3 People in Medicare is Now in Medicare Advantage, With Enrollment Still Concentrated Among a Handful of Insurers

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Medicare Advantage 2017 Spotlight: Enrollment Market Update

Medicare Advantage plans have played an increasingly larger role in the Medicare program as the share of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Advantage has steadily climbed over the past decade.  The trend in enrollment growth is continuing in 2017, and has occurred despite reductions in payments to plans enacted by the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA).  This Data Spotlight reviews national and state-level Medicare Advantage enrollment trends as of March 2017 and examines variations in enrollment by plan type and firm. It analyzes the most recent data on premiums, out-of-pocket limits, and quality ratings.  Key findings include:

  • Enrollment Growth. Since the ACA was passed in 2010, Medicare Advantage enrollment has grown 71 percent. As of 2017, one in three people with Medicare (33% or 19.0 million beneficiaries) is enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan (Figure 1).

 

  • Market Concentration. UnitedHealthcare and Humana together account for 41 percent of enrollment in 2017; enrollment continues to be highly concentrated among a handful of firms, both nationally and in local markets. In 17 states, one company has more than half of all Medicare Advantage enrollment – an indicator that these markets may not be very competitive.

 

  • Medicare Advantage Penetration. At least 40 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in Medicare private plans in six states: CA, FL, HI, MN, OR, and PA. In contrast, fewer than 20 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans in 13 states, plus the District of Columbia.

 

  • Premiums and Cost-Sharing. While average Medicare Advantage premiums paid by MA-PD enrollees have been relatively stable for the past several years ($36 per month in 2017), enrollees may be liable for more of Medicare’s costs, with average out-of-pocket limits increasing 21 percent and average Part D drug deductibles increasing more than 9-fold since 2011; however, there was little change in out-of-pocket limits and Part D drug deductibles from 2016 to 2017.

Medicare Advantage enrollment is projected to continue to grow over the next decade, rising to 41 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries by 2027.1  As private plans take on an even larger presence in the Medicare program, it will be important to understand the implications for beneficiaries covered under Medicare Advantage plans and traditional Medicare, as well as for plans, health care providers and program spending.

Children’s hospitals — and their patients — caught in the crosshairs with planned federal cuts

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http://www.healthcaredive.com/news/childrens-hospitals-and-their-patients-caught-in-the-crosshairs-with-p/443825/

Republican plans targeting federal funding for health coverage have drawn ire from Americans in all corners of the country, but some of the loudest voices are coming from parents. They have cornered members of Congress at town halls to ask how the slashed budgets will affect some of society’s most vulnerable.

Suggested cuts to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Plans (CHIP) would throw millions of Americans off insurance and leave hospitals that are already teetering financially facing more uncompensated care. Children’s hospitals, safety net hospitals and rural hospitals will be most affected, and disabled children will face devastating cuts in coverage.

The funding decreases have been proposed in bills making their way through Congress and separately by President Donald Trump. They would shift the cost burden further onto states, many of which have seen success in expanding Medicaid, which is also on the chopping block.

“Children, the elderly, the disabled, and others from our most vulnerable populations would all be affected by these deep budget cuts,” Joanna Hiatt Kim, vice president of policy at the American Hospital Association, told Healthcare Dive. “For hospitals, this could mean more uncompensated care as millions continue to seek needed healthcare without any coverage. For the patient, this could mean delayed care or foregoing care altogether.”

Impact on children’s healthcare

More cuts to Medicaid and CHIP would reverse the trend of fewer uninsured Americans, including children.

Congress created CHIP 20 years ago when 15% of children were uninsured. CHIP, the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion provided more insurance offerings and now only about 5% of children are uninsured. CHIP, which is a federal/state partnership, includes free well-child visits in many states and also provides prescription coverage, inpatient and outpatient care and emergency services.

While suggesting a two-year CHIP extension in his budget plan, Trump proposed a 20% CHIP cut over the next two years. His budget also seeks a $610 billion cut from Medicaid over 10 years, despite early promises to leave the program alone.

Studies have shown that CHIP helps reduce hospitalizations and child mortality, and improves quality of care. The program has bipartisan support. However, HHS Secretary Tom Price voted twice against expansion when he was a congressman.

CHIP is up for reauthorization by Sept. 30 and governors recently spoke out in favor of expanding it. In his budget proposal, Trump proposes a two-year extension of CHIP, but also suggests program cuts, including the matching rate for states.

Jim Kaufman, vice president of public policy at Children’s Hospital Association (CHA), told Healthcare Dive that CHIP helps children’s hospitals.

“CHIP is good for kids, and that makes it good for children’s hospitals and children’s providers.”

Jim Kaufman

Vice President of Public Policy, Children’s Hospital Association

Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Healthcare Dive that the cuts would shift costs to states and reduce benefits. He said Trump’s budget would eliminate a 23-percentage-point increase in each state’s federal CHIP matching rate, which is in effect until 2019. That would mean $3.5 billion cut from the program.

The budget would also cut CHIP funding for children with families that have incomes above 250% of the federal poverty line, which would affect 28 states and Washington, D.C. that provide CHIP coverage to children above the income threshold, according to Park.

This will mean states will need to pick up more of the CHIP program costs if they want to maintain the current coverage level. Park said he believes Congress will reauthorize the program, but questions remain about CHIP’s funding and benefits.

 

States Scramble to Prevent Obamacare Exodus

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States scramble to prevent ObamaCare exodus

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Insurance commissioners are pulling out all the stops to keep insurers from leaving their states amid uncertainty over ObamaCare’s future.

They are offering insurers new, previously unheard of flexibilities to try to keep them in the market.

But the effort faces an uphill climb, given the Trump administration’s wobbling over whether it will continue federal payments that compensate insurers for subsidizing out-of-pocket costs for lower-income households. There’s also the question of whether Congress will repeal ObamaCare this year.

Insurers are skittish and pleading for certainty from Washington. They want assurances that they will continue to receive cost-sharing reduction payments from the federal government, which total about $7 billion this year.

But no such promise appears forthcoming, prompting insurance commissioners to try and hold things together with later filing deadlines for enrollment and new concessions to insurers.

“As a regulator, instead of being rigid on timelines, the type of pricing I’m going to want, I’m being more open about this,” said John Franchini, New Mexico’s insurance superintendent. “I’m trying to be more flexible to give them confidence that if things change, we as regulators will be flexible with them.”

The biggest fear of the insurance commissioners is having every carrier pull out of a market, leaving people with no ObamaCare plans to buy. It’s a situation that hasn’t happened before, but could happen this year.

In several states, such as California, companies can file two different sets of premium requests: one for the continuation of ObamaCare — such as cost-sharing reduction payments and the enforcement of the individual mandate — and one for if both are discontinued.

“Based on what we were hearing from insurers, we anticipated Trump rates would be double-digit increases over the past year,” California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said. “I wanted to give insurers the opportunity to file rates based on Trump.”

Insurers are facing imminent deadlines in many states to submit their preliminary premium requests and state whether they’ll stay in the market. They also face a June 21 deadline to tell the federal government whether they’ll participate in ObamaCare next year.

Senate returns more pessimistic than ever on healthcare

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Senate returns more pessimistic than ever on healthcare

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Senators went into a recess skeptical over whether they could agree to legislation repealing and replacing ObamaCare.

They will return on Monday more doubtful than ever.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), one of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) most loyal allies, said Thursday that it’s “unlikely” the GOP will get a healthcare deal.

“I don’t see a comprehensive healthcare plan this year,” he told a local news station.

Senate Republicans hoped to have a draft bill this week, but it now looks like there will at best be an outline.

A Senate Republican aide said it’s too early to begin drafting legislation that can come to the floor in the next few weeks.

“Parameters are more likely,” said the aide, who explained that McConnell wants to keep the details held closely so the legislation doesn’t get picked apart before lawmakers have a chance to consider it carefully.

“The last thing we want to do is litigate this in the press,” the aide said. “We want to discuss parameters and concepts without releasing a draft.”

“Maybe they can start talking to members about a specific product next week, but I would not be surprised if we don’t,” said another Senate GOP aide.

More unhelpful news came in the form of a Kaiser Family Foundation poll underscoring how unpopular the bill approved by the House is.

It found that three-quarters of Americans surveyed think the House bill does not fulfill President Trump’s promises on healthcare.

A full 82 percent said federal funding for ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid should be continued, an issue that deeply divides the Senate GOP. The House bill ends the ObamaCare funds in 2020.

Yet another factor for Republicans is Trump’s approval rating, which has fallen to its lowest point with Republicans since he took office in the latest Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll.

Republicans already had sought to lower expectations.

McConnell conceded last week that, “I don’t know how we get to 50 [votes] at the moment.”

He sounded more optimistic about passing major tax reform legislation, rating its chances as “pretty good.”

Republicans control 52 seats and can afford only two defections from their ranks. Vice President Pence could cast the deciding vote in case of a 50-50 tie.

The Senate GOP hasn’t given up hope on healthcare and faces tremendous pressure from the White House and House Republicans to hold a vote.

Republicans for years have promised to repeal ObamaCare, so failure would be a major blow. They also face pressure to finish their work on healthcare because of the tax reform push.

The GOP is using special budgetary rules to prevent Democrats from filibustering legislation on tax reform and healthcare.

Republicans can’t move to tax reform until the healthcare debate is finished because once they pass a new budget resolution that would allow them to move tax legislation with 51 votes, they will lose the vehicle set up to enable a healthcare bill that would circumvent a Democratic filibuster.

Those on a special 13-member working group have heard very little about the drafting efforts that were supposed to take place over the recess.

ERISA: A Bipartisan Problem For The ACA And The AHCA

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http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2017/06/02/erisa-a-bipartisan-problem-for-the-aca-and-the-ahca/

The Supreme Court has once again been called on to mediate the boundaries of a far-reaching, infamously complex, federal employee benefits law. And once again this law may have an important and unanticipated effect on health care.

The main goal of this law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), was to provide uniform, federal regulation of pensions and employee benefit plans (including health care). But the law has had a far more dramatic impact on health policy beyond what Congress ever contemplated. Because ERISA pushes aside state regulation of these plans, it has impeded the states’ ability to partner with the federal government to achieve key health policy goals. ERISA has also stymied some of Congress’s goals under the Affordable Care Act, and may prove an even greater obstacle to Republican efforts to return more authority over health policy to the states.

ERISA and health reform have not meshed well. For instance, the ACA’s attempt to create greater uniformity of benefits is at odds with the way ERISA creates a special class of protected plans and blocks states efforts to regulate them. When you ask yourself why the ACA’s guarantee of essential health benefits applies to some health plans but not to others, the answer is deference to ERISA. When you ask yourself why some health plans are subject to state-mandated benefit laws but some remain exempt, the answer is ERISA.

The US Supreme Court has not helped. The Court decided two important ERISA cases last term and has another one in the term about to conclude. Those interested in health care should watch this case closely. Last term, even as the Court acknowledged ERISA’s tensions with the ACA, it ruled that ERISA blocked Vermont’s attempt, through an all-payer claims database, to partner in the ACA’s efforts to make health care spending more transparent. States, including Alaska for example, struggle in the wake of this ruling to make an all-payer claims database work. In the second case, the Court indicated that ERISA might thwart a compromise in a dispute between the federal government and Christian nonprofit organizations over the ACA and contraception coverage.

This term, the fight involves the intersection of religion, health, and ERISA once again. And again, the Court must say how far ERISA reaches. ERISA exempts “church plans” from its broad regulation. The Supreme Court will decide whether the exemption for church plans, defined as plans “established and maintained” by houses of worship, applies narrowly to plans created by churches or, more broadly, also to those created by church-affiliated organizations. The three plans in this litigation and many plans in question are pension plans for employees at Catholic hospitals and health systems. In Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton, consolidated with two other cases, the Court will determine whether Catholic hospitals—which now care for one in six patients in the U.S.—must guarantee the security of their employees’ pensions. Billions of dollars of pension shortfall and the financial security of 300,000 hospital workers are at stake.

We review the recent and upcoming ERISA jurisprudence below and conclude it is time for the Court, or Congress, to cabin ERISA’s reach when it comes to health care.

Senate GOP Considers Taxing Employer Plans in Bill

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https://morningconsult.com/briefs/health-brief-senate-gop-considers-taxing-employer-plans-bill/

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Washington Brief

  • Senate Republicans are considering taxing employer health insurance plans, but haven’t decided whether to include such a provision in a draft health care bill to repeal and replace major parts of the Affordable Care Act being crafted this week. (The Wall Street Journal)
  • The California State Senate advanced a bill to adopt a single-payer health care system on Thursday, but the measure does not include a way to pay for the $400 billion tab. (The Los Angeles Times)
  • Freedom Partners and Americans for Prosperity, conservative groups affiliated with the Koch Brothers, is urging HHS Secretary Tom Price to take action on “Phase 2” work that would undo parts of the ACA through regulation ahead of Congress passing a bill.

Business Brief

  • Premiums for policies sold on the individual market in Pennsylvania next year are set to increase by 8.8 percent on average, but the state’s insurance commissioner warned that could jump to a 36.3 percent increase if the Trump administration does not enforce certain aspects of the Affordable Care Act. (Lancaster Online)
  • Hospital leaders are concerned that President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement could hurt peoples’ health. (Axios)
  • Health insurers participating in models to improve care for beneficiaries enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid originally struggled to find participants, but new data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows many have overcome that challenge. (Modern Healthcare)