Tag Archives: Health Policy

Affordable Care Act premium rates projected to increase by 10 percent

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/affordable-care-act-premium-rates-projected-increase-10-percent?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWkRnek5UZGlPRGsxTVRrMSIsInQiOiJPdWRXMnVoYWEyTTJmMDZxMEJGQ3ZCN3lxa1NYUTdjeWtRdlJSQUNQQmQzSStsK2RZZDJcL1NlTjVTaHd3ZzhPcHB3amloQWNUNUtWQVhIWlwvVXlKbEEzR3dNMllwaEZ4VlNTek44SVpcL0UweHdoc2IzMHhBRTg0ZDVvdXlPM05MOCJ9

An estimated 2 percent of the increase will be due to the return on the health insurance tax.

Insurers are projected to submit rate increases in the Affordable Care Act market of about 10 percent, which is higher than the roughly 6 percent increase for 2019, according to Dave Dillon, a fellow of the Society of Actuaries and senior vice president of Lewis & Ellis, Actuaries and Consultants.

An estimated 2 percent of the increase will be due to the return on the health insurance tax. Medical inflation will account for 4-8 percent of the increase, which Dillon called a normal annual trend reflecting the underlying growth in healthcare costs.

Another 1 to 2 percent will be due to the decrease in the level of the premium tax credits. A reduction in the exchange user fee for federal and state-based exchanges will allow for a .5 to 1 percent decrease in rates.

Many factors play a role in rate setting, making predictions somewhat of an educated guess. But Dillon believes one issue that won’t be a factor, unless the court hands up a decision very soon, is the question of the constitutionality of the ACA being weighed in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas.

The Department of Justice recently said the ACA in its entirety should be struck down, now that the individual mandate is gone.

“While there’s a lot of topics going on, they’re not necessary ones that affect 2020 rates,” Dillon said. “The Texas case hangs over everybody but not as an actionable item right now.”

Neither is the Medicare for All debate likely to influence premiums for 2020, he said.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Insurers are getting ready to file their 2020 premium rates for the on-exchange market of the ACA.

Depending on the state, such as Vermont and the District of Columbia, which have deadlines this month, the filing season kicks into high gear during the first and second weeks of June. Other states, such as Arkansas, have a deadline in July, said Dillon, who works with about 10 states on rates.

Off-exchange rates are due later in summer.

Rates will vary by state and would be influenced by a state’s implementation of 1332 waivers to allow for less expansive plans. So far, no state has taken advantage of the waivers that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began offering last fall, according to The Washington Post.

TREND

ACA premium rates stabilized for 2019 and insurers returned to the market or expanded their coverage areas.

In making his prediction for rates for 2020, Dillon looked at medical loss ratios and profit margins from the 2018 season. These were stable compared to 2017 when insurers were filing two sets of rates depending on whether cost-sharing reduction payments would be continued under the Trump Administration.

President Trump did end the CSRs. However, to make up for the loss to insurers and to lower premium increases, the Department of Health and Human Services allowed insurers in the 2019 season and again for 2020, to silver load premium increases onto silver level plans. Since most beneficiaries get the benefit of federal subsidies for health insurance through the ACA, the federal government is still bearing the cost of allowing insurers to offer lower rates.

Unlike other years, Dillon said he’s not hearing a lot about the market, which he interprets as a stabilizing trend. Insurers aren’t coming in and out of the markets as much. Regional companies may be expanding into other states, but there’s been no talk of another large insurer getting in, he said.

“I think we’re on the path to gaining some traction and stability,” Dillon said. “Obviously the ACA has put us at lowest uninsured rate ever.”

ON THE RECORD

“Consistent with previous years, insurance rates will vary widely across individual states and marketplaces,” Dillon said.

 

 

How to save $80 billion a year on prescription drugs

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-vitals-2b22d854-43a4-481f-aa30-d1b14d859e29.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosvitals&stream=top

Illustration of a bill with money print on it.

Medicare could have saved almost $80 billion, just in 2018, by matching the U.K.’s prices for prescription drugs that don’t have any competition, according to a new study released in Health Affairs yesterday.

Why it matters: Medicare’s drug benefit was designed to keep prices in check through competition. But competition doesn’t always exist, and the U.S. doesn’t have many options to keep prices down in those cases.

  • Unlike the other three countries examined in the study, the U.S. doesn’t regulate drug prices.

Details: This study focuses on a group of single-source brand-name drugs in Medicare Part D that have been on the market for at least 3 years. Researchers compared U.S. prices for those drugs to prices in the U.K., Japan and Ontario.

  • On average, after accounting for rebates, Medicare paid 3.6 times more than the U.K., 3.2 times more than Japan, and 4.1 times more than Ontario.
  • The longer a drug was on the U.S. market, the larger that gap grew.
  • If Medicare Part D had adopted the average price from those countries, it would have saved an estimated $72.9 billion on sole-source drugs in 2018 alone.

Between the lines: The Trump administration wants to rely on international prices for Medicare Part B, which covers drugs administered in a doctor’s office. But this study shows that there are also a lot of savings to be had in Medicare Part D, which covers drugs you pick up at a pharmacy.

The other side: “An international reference pricing system could result in American seniors losing access to their choice of medicine, and waiting years longer for new breakthrough treatments,” the trade group PhRMA said in a statement.

The bottom line: The political interest in cutting drug prices is real, but we’re still a very long way from President Trump’s stated goal of matching other countries’ prices.

 

Lifting the Veil of Secrecy in Health Care Prices

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Lifting the Veil of Secrecy in Health Care Prices

Benjamin Franklin's portrair on a one hundred dollar bill peeks out from underneath a puzzle

Stories that caught our attention this week

The late, great Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt once said that the system for determining prices in the US health care system was “chaos behind a veil of secrecy.” That was in 2006, and clearly, the chaos persists today: In San Francisco, the price for a basic blood test ranges from $80 to $564; in Los Angeles, $12 to $413; and in Portland, $15 to $44.

Why does the price of one of the most common tests in medicine vary so much? Multiple factors like the bargaining power of insurers, provider consolidation, and underlying economic conditions Essential Coverage may explain some of the differences, but the veil shrouding these striking price discrepancies has yet to be completely lifted.

Margot Sanger-Katz writes in the New York Times that health care prices are still hard to uncover because hospitals and insurers set them behind closed doors, and some claim those prices are legally protected trade secrets. She looked at a new analysis by the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) that found “enormous swings in price for identical services are common in health care.” To compile the pricing data, HCCI had to pool de-identified health insurance claims submitted to three large insurance companies. “Even the institute can’t say which insurers and providers are attached to the different prices, and it has eliminated certain markets with less competition where it might be easy to guess,” Sanger-Katz writes.

Price transparency is slowly becoming more prevalent. A few online tools exist that allow the public to estimate the price of some medical procedures. The FAIR Health consumer tool has a five-step process for looking up in-network and out-of-network prices for procedures based on a patient’s location. Healthcare Bluebook has a consumer search tool for price information. And HCCI runs guroo.com, a national and regional-level tool that provides average prices for bundles of health care services.

Government Efforts to Make Prices More Transparent

Federal and state policies are starting to complement these efforts. On January 1, 2019, a new national health care transparency policy took effect. The federal government now requires hospitals to post their price lists, called chargemasters, online in a format that can be easily processed by a computer. Critics of the regulation say that chargemasters are virtually incomprehensible to patients, and Vox journalist Sarah Kliff points out that they only lay out the list prices that hospitals charge for services, not the negotiated prices that insurers actually pay. However, the policy still takes the health care system one step closer to being transparent about costs.

In California, work continues on the creation of a new statewide Healthcare Payments Database. Once completed, the database could provide policymakers, patients, and the public with greater insight into the prices charged for medical services. A review committee comprised of health care stakeholders and experts is advising California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) about the creation, implementation, and administration of the database. The office has until July 1, 2020, to deliver its recommendations to the legislature.

Several other state-level efforts to increase price transparency have been proposed or remain pending in the current legislative session. Assembly member Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) authored AB 1038, a recently stalled measure that would have required California physicians to provide OSHPD with information on the rates they charge the public as well as the different rates they negotiate with health plans for the same services. OSHPD would be required to aggregate the negotiated prices compared to Medicare rates by geographic region. State Senator Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) introduced SB 343, which would update current transparency and disclosure requirements for the health care industry to include data from Kaiser Permanente.

The Prices Are the Problem

Despite the fact that Americans do not use health care services at a greater rate than their counterparts in other advanced nations, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, the US spends much more on health care than those countries. Researchers from Harvard University and the London School of Economics published a study in JAMA showing that “prices of labor and goods, including pharmaceuticals, and administrative costs appeared to be the major drivers of the difference in overall cost between the US and other high-income countries.”

In other words, health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs are high not because Americans are sicker or go to the hospital too much, but because of soaring individual prices for services.

At a time when Californians are more worried about paying for medical bills than housing, policymakers and patient advocates will need to continue pulling back the veil of secrecy that obscures the true causes of inordinately expensive care.

 

 

 

Health care giants are dependent on payments Trump wants to end

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.axios.com/drug-prices-medicare-cvs-humana-unitedhealth-trump-1d66d7d6-66ea-4150-89f5-e3b357b17bb2.html

An older man grabs his prescription drugs at a pharmacy counter.

The 3 big health insurers that control a majority of Medicare’s prescription drug coverage — CVS Health, Humana and UnitedHealth Group — are arguably the most at risk from the Trump administration’s plan to eliminate rebates within Medicare.

The big picture: These companies rely heavily on rebates to offset the costs of covering seniors’ prescriptions. Losing those rebates would shift billions of dollars away from them, and they could lose customers if they raise premiums to make up the difference.

By the numbers: Axios analyzed the Medicare businesses within the companies’ 2018 filings with state insurance commissioners.

  • UnitedHealthcare paid $7.3 billion in prescription drug claims and received $4.1 billion in rebates, according to its major subsidiary in Connecticut.
  • Humana paid $7.1 billion in prescription drug claims and received $3.9 billion in rebates, according to its major subsidiary in Wisconsin.
  • CVS paid $6.3 billion in prescription drug claims and received $3.5 billion in rebates, according to its SilverScript subsidiary.

Between the lines: Those rebates offset more than half of what these 3 companies had to pay for people’s prescriptions.

  • That’s well above the average for all Medicare drug plans, which was just 25% in 2018 (Table IV.B8).
  • Plans don’t keep Medicare rebates as profit, and instead pass them back to the federal government. (They do, however, keep a small percentage of rebates from their commercial plans.)
  • The companies did not respond to requests for comment.

The bottom line: CVS, Humana and UnitedHealth — all of which vehemently oppose Trump’s proposed rebate rule — are “overly dependent on rebates to keep premiums low [so they can] buy market share, which is what these guys have been doing for the past decade,” said Emily Evans, a health care managing director at investment research firm Hedgeye.

  • If those rebates go away, sooner or later the big 3 would have to raise monthly premiums to avoid losses.
  • And hiking drug plan premiums could persuade seniors to switch to competing plans that don’t rely on rebates and therefore won’t need to raise their premiums as much.

 

 

 

Getting Distracted by the Politics of Healthcare

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Image result for strategy

A number of interactions over the past two weeks have convinced me that the political debate over M4A in Congress, amplified by Presidential candidates jockeying for favor with primary voters, is beginning to seriously spook executives across healthcare.

At a health system board meeting in the Southwest last week, a number of physician leaders and board members had questions about the possible timing and dimensions of a shift to “single payer”, clearly convinced that M4A is an inevitability if Democrats take over in 2020. And two separate inbound calls this week, one from the CEO of a regional health system, and the other from a health plan executive, were both sparked by the hearings on M4A in Congress.

Again, the implicit assumption in their questions about timing and impact was the same: M4A, or something like it, is sure to happen if the 2020 elections favors Democrats. My response to all of them: keep an eye on the politics, but don’t get overly distracted. There’s little chance that “single payer” healthcare will come to the US—industry lobbies are simply too powerful to let that happen.

Even if Democrats do win the Senate and the White House in 2020, they’ll have to “govern to the center” to hold onto their majorities, and any major policy shifts will have to be negotiated across the various interests involved. Most likely: measures to strengthen provisions of the ACA, and perhaps a “public option” in the ACA exchanges.

As to Medicare expansion, I believe the most we’d see in a Democratic administration would be a compromise allowing 55- to 65-year-olds to buy into Medicare Advantage plans.

But for now, M4A’s biggest risk to hospitals and doctors is that it becomes a paralyzing distraction, keeping provider organizations from making the strategic and operational changes needed to re-orient care delivery around value.

Regardless of the politics, a focus on delivering value to the consumers of care will prove to be a no-regrets position for providers.

Democrats Draw up their Healthcare Battle Lines

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Image result for battle lines

Now that former Vice President Joe Biden has thrown his hat in the ring for the 2020 Presidential race, the healthcare policy differences between moderate and progressive factions of the Democratic party are becoming clearer. On Monday, Biden revealed the broad outlines of his healthcare platform, coming out in favor of a “public option” that would allow Americans to buy into the Medicare program, but would leave the existing employer-sponsored insurance framework largely intact. “If the insurance company isn’t doing right by you, you should have another choice,” Biden said in a campaign rally in Pittsburgh. Although his campaign did not announce details of the proposal, Biden seems to support the idea of offering a Medicare plan to employers and individuals through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces.

As the frontrunner in the primary race, Biden’s support for this more moderate approach to coverage expansion will surely make him the favored candidate of healthcare industry interests, who have come out swinging hard against “Medicare for All” (M4A) proposals.

But his position earned him a swipe from progressive candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who’s running second among Democrats in early polling. “It doesn’t go anywhere near far enough,” said Sanders of Biden’s proposal, “it will be expensive, [and] it will not cover a whole lot of people.” Sanders instead favors eliminating private insurance altogether and moving quickly toward a single-payer system built around universal Medicare coverage.

As the Presidential race takes shape, expect candidates to orient around one of these two poles: Biden’s moderate approach (O’Rourke, Buttigieg, Klobuchar); and Sanders’s more aggressive position (Warren, Harris, Booker).

Either position will present a stark contrast in the general election, as the Trump administration looks to reinvigorate the effort to strike down the ACA entirely. The 2020 elections are shaping up to be a pivotal moment for healthcare.

The Financial Impact of Medicare for All on Hospitals

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

 

 

With all of the focus on M4A recently, in its many permutations, we’re hearing a growing concern among hospital executives and physician leaders that their economics could be in serious peril. (For more on this, see the below anecdote from “on the road”.) That concern is justified, as you can see from the graphic below.

On the left, we show data on payment-to-cost ratio for hospitals since the start of the 2000s. As you can see, hospitals rely heavily on a cross-subsidy model—Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement covers only 86 to 88 percent of the total cost of inpatient care delivery. Hospitals make up this difference, and generate a positive margin, by negotiating rates for commercially-insured patients that cover almost 145 percent of costs. As health systems have consolidated and built negotiating leverage, that percentage has steadily risen over the past several years, more than offsetting losses on publicly-insured patients.

The problem? Those lucrative commercial patients only account for a third of admissions, as shown at the bottom right. And across the past decade and a half, commercial admissions have dropped by more than 20 percent. In other words, hospitals have been consolidating and raising commercial rates on a declining book of business in order to compensate for underpayment on a growing volume of government-paid cases.

Now imagine that the commercial business disappeared entirely, and you can see what would happen—hospital finances would crater. Under M4A, Medicare rates would have to go up substantially to make up for the lost margin on commercial cases. Even if M4A turned out to be “Medicare Advantage for More”, trading commercial admissions (say, for the 55-65 population) for MA admissions (which are generally paid at Medicare FFS rates), this would create a difficult situation for hospitals.

In our view, this economic reality is not getting discussed enough in the current debate over M4A. 

 

Digging into the details of single-payer healthcare

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Click to access 55150-singlepayer.pdf

Digging into the details of single-payer healthcare
  
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill rolled up their sleeves this week and began to explore what a shift to Bernie Sanders-style “single payer” healthcare would really mean. In a hearing before the House Rules Committee on Tuesday, Congress heard from proponents of M4A and policy experts about the implications of single-payer health coverage, at least as envisioned by a recent bill authored by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).

Although the committee does not have direct jurisdiction over Medicare, and Jayapal’s bill may never be introduced onto the floor of the House (since it lacks support from the Democratic leadership there), the hearing gave lawmakers their first chance to publicly probe the proposal, with predictable positions staked out by Democrats and Republicans on the committee.

More hearings are likely later this year, including by the House Budget Committee, which this week received a report it requested from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on the topic of single-payer healthcare. While the report does not address specific details about the cost or tax implications of a shift to single payer, it nonetheless provides an outstanding primer on the key questions that will have to be answered as part of any serious attempt to pursue M4A.

The graphic below, taken from the CBO document, poses those questions in a clear and helpful way, and the full report lays out a framework for approaching them. It’s a sober look at the hard problems that need to be faced: provider payment levels, increased wait times, public vs. private financing, access to unproven treatments.

Whatever your view on the topic, we’d highly recommend reading the CBO report in full.

Trump Administration Files Formal Request to Strike Down All of Obamacare

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

The Trump administration formally declared its opposition to the entire Affordable Care Act on Wednesday, arguing in a federal appeals court filing that the signature Obama-era legislation was unconstitutional and should be struck down.

Such a decision could end health insurance for some 21 million Americans and affect many millions more who benefit from the law’s protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions and required coverage for pregnancy, prescription drugs and mental health.

In filing the brief, the administration abandoned an earlier position — that some portions of the law, including the provision allowing states to expand their Medicaid programs, should stand. The switch, which the administration disclosed in late March, has confounded many people in Washington, even within the Republican Party, who came to realize that health insurance and a commitment to protecting the A.C.A. were among the main issues that propelled Democrats to a majority in the House of Representatives last fall.

The filing was made in a case challenging the law brought by Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, and 17 other Republican-led states. In December, a federal judge from the Northern District of Texas, Reed O’Connor, ruled that the law was unconstitutional.

A group of 21 Democratic-led states, headed by California, immediately appealed, and the case is now before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The House of Representatives has joined the case as well to defend the law.

Democrats wasted no time responding to the filing Wednesday. Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, a Democrat, said: “The Trump administration chose to abandon ship in defending our national health care law and the hundreds of millions of Americans who depend on it for their medical care. Our legal coalition will vigorously defend the law and the Americans President Trump has abandoned.”

The government’s brief did not shed light on why it had altered its earlier position, referring only to “further consideration and review of the district court’s opinion.”

Oral arguments in the appeals court are expected in July, with a possible decision by the end of the year, as the 2020 presidential campaign gets going in earnest. Whichever side loses is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department’s request to expedite oral arguments, granted last month, suggests that the administration is eager for a final ruling. In its application, it said that “prompt resolution of this case will help reduce uncertainty in the health care sector, and other areas affected by the Affordable Care Act.”

Democrats, seizing on the health law’s popularity and its decisive role in their winning the House last fall, are already using the case as a cudgel against President Trump as his re-election campaign gets started. The law’s guarantee of coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, in particular, remains very popular with voters in both parties as well as independents.

But Mr. Trump has appeared undaunted, tweeting in April that “Republicans will always support Pre-Existing Conditions” and that a replacement plan “will be on full display during the Election as a much better & less expensive alternative to Obamacare.”

Instead of providing specifics, though, Mr. Trump, members of his administration and other Republicans have focused on attacking the Medicare for All plans that some Democratic presidential candidates have sponsored or endorsed as a dangerous far-left idea that would, as Mr. Trump tweeted, cause millions of Americans “to lose their beloved private health insurance.”

As the administration and Texas noted in their briefs, Judge O’Connor’s ruling turned on the law’s requirement that most people have health coverage or be subject to a tax penalty.

But in the 2017 tax legislation, Congress reduced that penalty to zero, effectively eliminating it. Judge O’Connor, the plaintiff states, and now the Trump administration reasoned that, like a house of cards, when the tax penalty fell, the so-called individual mandate became unconstitutional and unenforceable. Therefore, the entire law had to fall as well.

Mr. Paxton, the Texas attorney general, whose office also filed a brief on Wednesday, said: “Congress meant for the individual mandate to be the centerpiece of Obamacare. Without the constitutional justification for the centerpiece, the law must go down.”

Whether that position will survive judicial scrutiny is another question. Nicholas Bagley, who teaches health law at the University of Michigan Law School, noted that only two lawyers signed the brief. That is highly unusual in a case with such a high profile, he said.

“This is a testament to the outrageousness of the Justice Department position, that no reasonable argument could be made in the statute’s defense,” Mr. Bagley said. “It is a truly indefensible position. This is just partisan hardball.”

Many legal scholars have also said that even before appellate judges wade into the more obscure pools of legal reasoning, they could reach a decision by addressing the question of congressional intent. If Congress had meant the erasure of the tax penalty to wipe out the entire act, such an argument goes, it would have said so.

If the Fifth Circuit overturns the O’Connor decision, there is no guarantee that the Supreme Court would take an appeal. The court has ruled on two earlier A.C.A. challenges, finding in favor of the act, although narrowing it.

Of course, the composition of the Supreme Court has since changed.

 

 

 

The CBO analyzed what it would take to shift to a single-payer system. Here are 5 takeaways

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/5-takeaways-from-cbo-s-analysis-a-single-payer-system?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTURRNU5HTmpZbU5tT1RFeiIsInQiOiJLcVdxN0dKUU5iaEdMTGtaMG9xbFdtdEgxdXJBbndhTUNyMWN6UTZzbGJhTHFkS3Z4eTRBZkFGNUxcLzlyZUxvMHpOUDRDbmptdGE4aHVoMk4wS1NTYUlWMFVPMmFxNEEzTkJcL1RDODhYa3psN0VkNFhFdTVqYjlDSHltaTdPMUFxIn0%3D&mrkid=959610

Image result for congressional budget office

As chatter about “Medicare-for-All” ideas heats up—at least among the field of Democratic presidential hopefuls—the Congressional Budget Office decided to offer its own take.

Well, sort of.

Wednesday, the CBO issued a report that dove into the key considerations policymakers might want to think about before they overhaul the U.S. healthcare into a single-payer system. Putting it mildly, they said, the endeavor would be a “major undertaking.”

They don’t actually offer up specific cost estimates on any of the Medicare-for-All bills floating around, though other researchers put Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-for-All plan at between $32.6 trillion and $38.8 trillion over the first decade.

But the CBO analysts did weigh in on a slew of different approaches to financing, coverage, enrollment and reimbursement that could be built into a single-payer plan.

“Establishing a single-payer system would be a major undertaking that would involve substantial changes in the sources and extent of coverage, provider payment rates and financing methods of healthcare in the United States,” the CBO said.

So what exactly did the CBO have to say about what it would take to create a single-payer system? Here are some key takeaways:

1. There could be a role for private insurance—or not

There has been plenty of heated debate around Medicare for All focused on the role that existing private coverage could—or could not—play in that system. Most insured Americans are enrolled in a private plan today, including about one-third of Medicare beneficiaries.

If they’re allowed, commercial plans could play one of three roles in a single-payer system, according to the report: as supplemental coverage, as an alternative plan or to offer “enhanced” services to members in the government plan. 

Allowing private insurers to offer substitutive plans is unlikely, because they could potentially offer broader provider networks or more generous benefits, which would draw people into them. A solution to this issue could be mandating that providers treat a minimum number of patients who are enrolled in a single-payer plan.

Private payers could also offer coverage for care that is traditionally outside of the purview of government programs, such as dental care, vision care and hearing care.

Supplemental plans like these are offered in the existing Medicare program, and several countries with single-payer systems allow this additional coverage.

For example, in England, private plans offer “enhancements” to members of the government plan, including shorter wait times and access to alternative therapies, But members of these plans must pay for it in addition to tax contributions to the country’s National Health Service. 

2. Other government programs could stick around

In addition to Medicare and Medicaid, the federal government operates several health programs targeting individual populations: the Veterans Affairs health system, TRICARE and Indian Health Services.

A single-payer system could be designed in a way that also maintains these individualized programs, the CBO said. Canada does this today, where its provinces operate the national system while it offers specific programs outside that for indigenous people, veterans, federal police officers and others.

There could also be a continuing role for Medicaid, according to the report. 

“Those public programs were created to serve populations with special needs,” the CBO said. “Under a single-payer system, some components of those programs could continue to operate separately and provide benefits for services not covered by the single-payer health plan.”

On the flip side, though, a single-payer plan could choose to fold members of those programs into the broader, national program as well, the office said. 

3. A simplified system could also mean simplified tech

Taiwan’s government-run health system has a robust technology system that can monitor patients’ use of services and healthcare costs in near real-time, according to the report.  

Residents are issued a National Health Insurance card that can store key information about them, including personal identifiers, recent visits for care, what prescriptions they use and any chronic conditions they may have.  Providers also submit daily data updates to a government databank on service use, which is used to closely monitor utilization and cost. Other technology platforms in Taiwan can track prescription drug use and patients’ medical histories.

However, getting to a streamlined system like this in the U.S. would be bumpy, the CBO said. It would face many of the same challenges the health system is already up against today, such as straddling many federal and state agencies and addressing the needs of both rural and urban providers.

But the payoffs could be significant, according to the report. 

“A standardized IT system could help a single-payer system coordinate patient care by implementing portable electronic medical records and reducing duplicated services,” the agency wrote. 

4. How to structure payments to providers? Likely global budgets

Most existing single-payer systems use a global budget to pay providers, and may also apply in tandem other payment approaches such as capitation or bundled payments according to the report.

How these global budgets operate varies between countries. Canada’s hospitals operate under such a model, while Taiwan sets a national healthcare budget and then issues fee-for-service payments to individual providers. England also uses a national global budget.

Global budgets are rare in the U.S., though Maryland hospitals operate under an all-payer system. These models put more of the financial risk on providers to keep costs within the budget constraints. 

Many international single-payer systems pay based on volume, but the CBO said value-based contracting could be built into any of these payment arrangements.

5. Premiums and cost-sharing are still in play, especially depending on tax structures

A government-run health system would, by its nature, need to be funded by tax dollars, but some countries with a single-payer system do charge premiums or other cost-sharing to offset some of those expenditures.

Canada and England operate on general tax revenues, while Taiwan and Denmark include other types of financing. Danes pay a dedicated, income tax to back the health system, while the Taiwanese have a payroll-based premium. 

The type of tax considered would have different implications on financing, according to the CBO. A progressive tax rate, for instance, would impose higher levies on people with higher incomes, while a consumption tax, such as one added to cigarettes, would affect people more evenly.

Policymakers will also have to weigh when to impose new taxes, shifting the economic burden between generations. 

The CBO did not offer any cost estimates in terms of the amount the federal government would need to raise in taxes to fund a single-payer program.