Tag Archives: High Risk Pools

What’s Past Is Prologue: CBO’s Score for the House-Passed AHCA Reminds Us Why Insurance Markets Need Regulation

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http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/blog/2017/jun/why-insurance-markets-need-regulation

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The Trump administration has been arguing for months that the insurance market reforms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are not working and are even harming consumers. But four years of accumulated data on Americans’ experiences in a reformed individual market provides considerable evidence to the contrary. Americans’ ability to buy comprehensive health plans on their own has improved significantly since the reforms went into effect in 2014. Most people with marketplace plans are satisfied with them and have used their plans to get health care they couldn’t have obtained in the past. A majority of those eligible for subsidies have premiums and deductibles similar to those in employer plans. And while policy fixes are needed to improve affordability, as well competition in some areas of the country, the marketplaces were looking increasingly stable for both consumers and insurers at the beginning of this year.

It is actually the lack of certainty about the administration’s actions regarding the enforcement of the market reforms, rather than the reforms themselves, that are the primary source of the marketplace’s current problems. The importance of the ACA’s insurance market reforms were underscored last week in the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) analysis of the House-passed American Health Care Act (AHCA), the Republican’s ACA repeal-and-replace bill. The report included an assessment of an amendment that would allow states to undo some of the reforms. That assessment is a powerful illustration of why these reforms were needed in the first place.

The MacArthur Amendment Relaxes ACA Individual Market Reforms

In the week before the House vote in May, Representative Tom MacArthur sponsored an amendment to the AHCA that provided waivers for states that wanted to relax two major sets of ACA reforms:

  • The requirement that insurance companies sell policies that cover a standard set of health benefits similar to those in employer-based coverage
  • The ban that prevents insurance companies from charging people more based on their health.

Under the first waiver, states could let insurers eliminate coverage for many services, significantly driving up out-of-pocket costs for people who need these services. Under the second waiver, states could allow insurers to price, or underwrite, people’s insurance based on their health if they applied for a plan and had a gap in their insurance of 63 days or more. States with the waivers would be required to establish high-risk pools or reinsurance programs to make coverage affordable for people who had higher premiums as a result. They could draw funds from the AHCA’s Patient and State Stability Fund, a pool of $10–$15 billion a year over 2018–2026 that was supplemented for various purposes through amendments.1

CBO Estimated About Half the U.S. Population Lives in States That Would Request Waivers

If there were doubts about whether any states would apply for the waivers, the CBO had some news: half the U.S. population could live in states that would use these waivers to begin deregulating their individual insurance markets. The basis for their estimate? In part, they considered state approaches to their individual markets prior to the ACA. States that had previously allowed insurers the freest rein in consumer coverage denials, rating on health, and flexibility in what services they would cover were expected to loosen the reins again.

CBO also expected that states that sought the waivers would implement them in different ways. Some states might modestly deregulate their markets while others might make more dramatic changes. For example, some states might require insurers to cover a core set of benefits but allow them to exclude maternity or mental health services. Using 2014 data, RAND researchers have estimated that this could increase the costs to families of having a baby by $6,900 to $9,300 and the annual costs of mental health care by $1,300 to over $12,000. Other states might go a step further and let insurers determine the entire content of their benefit packages as they did in many states prior to the ACA, leaving many people with preexisting conditions stuck with the full cost of their care.

Likewise, CBO assumed that some states would take different approaches to reintroducing individual underwriting in their markets. Because healthy people would face lower premiums if they were rated on the basis of their health, they would have little incentive to maintain continuous coverage, since they would prefer the lower rate they would receive if carriers rated them on health. In order to keep healthy people in the community-rated risk pool (the one with both healthy and unhealthy enrollees), a state might only allow underwriting of people with health problems.

Other states might go whole hog and allow underwriting on health for everyone who had a coverage gap, regardless of their health status. These markets over time would begin to look like those of the pre-ACA past: markets segmented into pools where people in good health could find affordable plans and those with health problems were priced out of the market. The CBO concluded that the funds set aside for state high-risk pools for people with health problems were inadequate to make coverage affordable for people with preexisting conditions in these states.

What’s Past Is Prologue

Decades of experience with the individual market in the United States has shown that without considerable regulation the market simply cannot function for all those who rely on it. Allowing insurers in the past to price each individual’s policy according to their health penalized those who were the sickest and rewarded those who were the healthiest. The 35 states that tried to patch high-risk pools onto their individually rated markets and the ACA’s own transitional Preexisting Conditions Insurance Plan program left robust evidence that high-risk pools were expensive for states and the people who enrolled in them, left millions uninsured, and were ultimately unsustainable. States that had attempted to ban pricing based on health status (like New York and New Jersey) also experienced instabilitybecause the lack of premium subsidies and an individual mandate left their markets lopsided: too many people in poorer health without the balance provided by those in better health.  As a result, premiums soared.

In contrast, four years of experience with the ACA’s insurance market reforms demonstrates that it is possible for this market to offer affordable, comprehensive insurance to people with diverse health needs. In 2010, 60 percent of adults who tried to buy a plan in the individual market said that they found it very difficult or impossible to find one they could afford. By 2016, that number had fallen by nearly half, to 34 percent. While this rate leaves plenty of room for improvement, the substantial decline suggests that the U.S. has been headed in the right direction if private markets are the nation’s preferred path to universal coverage. But any future movement along this path will require the full commitment of the Trump administration and Congress to enforcing and improving the ACA’s reforms of our complex private health insurance markets.

What Graham-Cassidy means for pre-existing conditions

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https://www.axios.com/what-graham-cassidy-really-means-for-pre-existing-conditions-2487720743.html

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Jimmy Kimmel’s takedown of Sen. Bill Cassidy, and Cassidy’s response, ripped open the question of whether the GOP’s latest health reform bill protects people with pre-existing conditions. Cassidy and co-sponsor Sen. Lindsey Graham insist it does — as did President Trump in a tweet last night — but experts say that’s not really the case.

The bottom line: The bill’s funding cuts could pressure states — even blue states — to waive protections for sick people, as a way to keep premium increases in check. Older, sicker people in every state could end up paying more as states try to make up for a funding shortfall.

What the bill does: The bill wouldn’t repeal the Affordable Care Act’s rules about pre-existing conditions. But they might end up only existing on paper, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Larry Levitt said.

Graham-Cassidy doesn’t let states waive the part of the Affordable Care Act that says insurers have to cover sick people. But it does allow states to opt out of several other ACA rules that can cause people with pre-existing conditions to pay more for their health care. Those provisions include:

  • The ban on charging sick people higher premiums than healthy people.
  • The requirement that insurers cover “essential health benefits,” including prescription drugs. People who need expensive drugs might not have access to a plan that covers those drugs, requiring them to pay out of pocket.
    • Services that aren’t “essential” benefits aren’t subject to the ACA’s ban on annual and lifetime limits.
  • The bill also would also loosen rules about how much insurers can raise their premiums because of a customer’s age. (Older people are more likely to have pre-existing conditions.)

What supporters will argue: The bill requires states to say how their waivers would provide affordable and accessible coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. But there’s no definition of what that means, and there’s also no enforcement mechanism.

  • “The bottom line is these protections are much more at risk under this bill than they are now,” said Cori Uccello, a senior health fellow with the American Academy of Actuaries.

Another level: At least theoretically, because the bill gives states so much control, a more liberal state like California might choose to preserve more of the ACA’s regulations than, say, Alabama. But this bill would radically redistribute federal health care funding — generally away from blue and purple states and toward red states. Those cuts could back blue states into seeking more expansive waivers.

  • Caroline Pearson of Avalere told me: “if you have less money, you either cover fewer people, or you cover the same amount of people with less generous coverage. People with pre existing conditions are very reliant on having access to affordable insurance and need insurance that is comprehensive. So if a bill reduces the availability of comprehensive insurance, people with chronic conditions are going to be disproportionately harmed.”

 

5 Ways the Graham-Cassidy Proposal Puts Medicaid Coverage At Risk

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5 Ways the Graham-Cassidy Proposal Puts Medicaid Coverage At Risk

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The Graham-Cassidy proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is reviving the federal health reform debate and could come up for a vote in the Senate in the next two weeks before the budget reconciliation authority expires on September 30. The Graham-Cassidy proposal goes beyond the American Health Care Act (AHCA) passed by the House in May and the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) that failed in the Senate in July. The Graham-Cassidy proposal revamps and cuts Medicaid, redistributes federal funds across states, and eliminates coverage for millions of poor Americans as described below:
  1. Ends federal funding for current ACA coverage and partially replaces that funding with a block grant that expires after 2026. The proposal ends both the authority to cover childless adults and funding for the ACA Medicaid expansion that covers 15 million adults. Under Graham-Cassidy, a new block grant, the “Market-Based Health Care Grant Program,” combines federal funds for the ACA Medicaid expansion, premium and cost sharing subsidies in the Marketplace, and states’ Basic Health Plans for 2020-2026. Capped nationally, the block grant would be lower than ACA spending under current law and would end after 2026. States would need to replace federal dollars or roll back coverage. Neither the AHCA nor the BCRA included expiration dates for ACA-related federal funds or eliminated the ability for states to cover childless adults through Medicaid.
  2. Massively redistributes federal funding from Medicaid expansion states to non-expansion states through the block grant program penalizing states that broadened coverage. In 2020, block grant funds would be distributed based on federal spending in states for ACA Medicaid and Marketplace coverage. By 2026, funding would go to states according to the states’ portion of the population with incomes between 50% and 138% of poverty; the new allocation is phased in over the 2021-2025 period. The Secretary has the authority to make other adjustments to the allocation. This allocation would result in a large redistribution of ACA funding by 2026, away from states that adopted the Medicaid expansion and redirecting funding to states that did not. No funding is provided beyond 2026.
  3. Prohibits Medicaid coverage for childless adults and allows states to use limited block grant funds to purchase private coverage for traditional Medicaid populations. States can use funds under the block grant to provide tax credits and/or cost-sharing reductions for individual market coverage, make direct payments to providers, or provide coverage for traditional Medicaid populations through private insurance. The proposal limits the amount of block grant funds that a state could use for traditional Medicaid populations to 15% of its allotment (or 20% under a special waiver). These limits would shift coverage and funds for many low-income adults from Medicaid to individual market coverage. Under current law, 60% of federal ACA coverage funding is currently for the Medicaid expansion (covering parents and childless adults). Medicaid coverage is typically more comprehensive, less expensive and has more financial protections compared to private insurance. The proposal also allows states to roll back individual market protections related to premium pricing, including allowing premium rating based on health status, and benefits currently in the ACA.
  4. Caps and redistributes federal funds to states for the traditional Medicaid program for more than 60 million low-income children, parents, people with disabilities and the elderly. Similar to the BCRA and AHCA, the proposal establishes a Medicaid per enrollee cap as the default for federal financing based on a complicated formula tied to different inflation rates. As a result, federal Medicaid financing would grow more slowly than estimates under current law. In addition to overall spending limits, similar to the BCRA, the proposal would give the HHS Secretary discretion to further redistribute capped federal funds across states by making adjustments to states with high or low per enrollee spending.
  5. Eliminates federal funding for states to cover Medicaid family planning at Planned Parenthood clinics for one year. Additional funding restrictions include limits on states’ ability to use provider tax revenue to finance Medicaid as well as the termination of the enhanced match for the Community First Choice attendant care program for seniors and people with disabilities. Enrollment barriers include the option for states to condition Medicaid eligibility on a work requirement and to conduct more frequent redeterminations.
Much is at stake for low-income Americans and states in the Graham-Cassidy proposal. The recent debate over the AHCA and the BCRA has shown the difficulty of making major changes that affect coverage for over 70 million Americans and reduce federal funding for Medicaid. Medicaid has broad support and majorities across political parties say Medicaid is working well. More than half of the states have a strong stake in continuing the ACA Medicaid expansion as it has provided coverage to millions of low-income residents, reduced the uninsured and produced net fiscal benefits to states. Graham-Cassidy prohibits states from using Medicaid to provide coverage to childless adults. With regard to Medicaid financing changes, caps on federal funding could shift costs to states and result in less fiscal flexibility for states. States with challenging demographics (like an aging population), high health care needs (like those hardest hit by the opioid epidemic), high cost markets or states that operate efficient programs may have the hardest time responding to federal caps on Medicaid spending. Faced with substantially reduced federal funding, states would face difficult choices: raise revenue, reduce spending in other areas, or cut Medicaid provider payments, optional benefits, and/or optional coverage groups.

Last-Ditch Effort By Republicans To Replace ACA: What You Need To Know

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http://khn.org/news/last-ditch-gop-effort-to-replace-aca-5-things-you-need-to-know/

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Republican efforts in Congress to “repeal and replace” the federal Affordable Care Act are back from the dead. Again.

While the chances for this last-ditch measure appear iffy, many GOP senators are rallying around a proposal by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), along with Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)

They are racing the clock to round up the needed 50 votes — and there are 52 Senate Republicans.

An earlier attempt to replace the ACA this summer fell just one vote short when Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted against it. The latest push is setting off a massive guessing game on Capitol Hill about where the GOP can pick up the needed vote.

After Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year, Republicans would need 60 votes ­— which means eight Democrats — to pass any such legislation because special budget rules allowing approval with a simple majority will expire.

Unlike previous GOP repeal-and-replace packages that passed the House and nearly passed the Senate, the Graham-Cassidy proposal would leave in place most of the ACA taxes that generated funding to expand coverage for millions of Americans. The plan would simply give those funds as lump sums to each state. States could do almost whatever they please with them. And the Congressional Budget Office has yet to weigh in on the potential impact of the bill, although earlier estimates of similar provisions suggest premiums would go up and coverage down.

“If you believe repealing and replacing Obamacare is a good idea, this is your best and only chance to make it happen, because everything else has failed,” said Graham in unveiling the bill last week.

Here are five things to know about the latest GOP bill: 

1. It would repeal most of the structure of the ACA.

The Graham-Cassidy proposal would eliminate the federal insurance exchange, healthcare.gov, along with the subsidies and tax credits that help people with low and moderate incomes — and small businesses — pay for health insurance and associated health costs. It would eliminate penalties for individuals who fail to obtain health insurance and employers who fail to provide it.

It would eliminate the tax on medical devices. 

2. It would eliminate many of the popular insurance protections, including those for people with preexisting conditions, in the health law.

Under the proposal, states could “waive” rules in the law requiring insurers to provide a list of specific “essential health benefits” and mandating that premiums be the same for people regardless of their health status. That would once again expose people with preexisting health conditions to unaffordable or unavailable coverage. Republicans have consistently said they wanted to maintain these protections, which polls have shown to be popular among voters.

3. It would fundamentally restructure the Medicaid program.

Medicaid, the joint-federal health program for low-income people, currently covers more than 70 million Americans. The Graham-Cassidy proposal would end the program’s expansion under the ACA and cap funding overall, and it would redistribute the funds that had provided coverage for millions of new Medicaid enrollees. It seeks to equalize payments among states. States that did not expand Medicaid and were getting fewer federal dollars for the program would receive more money and states that did expand would see large cuts, according to the bill’s own sponsors. For example, Oklahoma would see an 88 percent increase from 2020 to 2026, while Massachusetts would see a 10 percent cut.

The proposal would also bar Planned Parenthood from getting any Medicaid funding for family planning and other reproductive health services for one year, the maximum allowed under budget rules governing this bill. 

4. It’s getting mixed reviews from the states.

Sponsors of the proposal hoped for significant support from the nation’s governors as a way to help push the bill through. But, so far, the governors who are publicly supporting the measure, including Scott Walker (R-Wis.) and Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.), are being offset by opponents including Chris Sununu (R-N.H.), John Kasich (R-Ohio) and Bill Walker (I-Alaska).

On Tuesday 10 governors — five Democrats, four Republicans and Walker — sent a letterto Senate leaders urging them to pursue a more bipartisan approach. “Only open, bipartisan approaches can achieve true, lasting reforms,” said the letter.

Bill sponsor Cassidy was even taken to task publicly by his own state’s health secretary. Dr. Rebekah Gee, who was appointed by Louisiana’s Democratic governor, wrote that the bill “uniquely and disproportionately hurts Louisiana due to our recent [Medicaid] expansion and high burden of extreme poverty.”

5. The measure would come to the Senate floor with the most truncated process imaginable.

The Senate is working on its Republican-only plans under a process called “budget reconciliation,” which limits floor debate to 20 hours and prohibits a filibuster. In fact, all the time for floor debate was used up in July, when Republicans failed to advance any of several proposed overhaul plans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could bring the bill back up anytime, but senators would immediately proceed to votes. Specifically, the next order of business would be a process called “vote-a-rama,” where votes on the bill and amendments can continue, in theory, as long as senators can stay awake to call for them.

Several senators, most notably John McCain, who cast the deciding vote to stop the process in July, have called for “regular order,” in which the bill would first be considered in the relevant committee before coming to the floor. The Senate Finance Committee, which Democrats used to write most of the ACA, has scheduled a hearing for next week. But there is not enough time for full committee consideration and a vote before the end of next week.

Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office said in a statement Tuesday that it could come up with an analysis by next week that would determine whether the proposal meets the requirements to be considered under the reconciliation process. But it said that more complicated questions like how many people would lose insurance under the proposal or what would happen to insurance premiums could not be answered “for at least several weeks.”

That has outraged Democrats, who are united in opposition to the measure.

“I don’t know how any senator could go home to their constituents and explain why they voted for a major bill with major consequences to so many of their people without having specific answers about how it would impact their state,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the Senate floor Tuesday.

WHY RETURNING TO A PRE-ACA MARKET ISN’T AN OPTION

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http://www.managedhealthcareconnect.com/article/why-returning-pre-aca-market-isn-t-option

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After the recent failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it is anyone’s guess as to what comes next. Tax reform and infrastructure now appear to have moved ahead of health care on the legislative agenda—leaving the ACA largely out of lawmakers’ hands, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) at the helm.

The President has implied that the federal government might halt federal payments to insurance companies meant to provide financial assistance to consumers who qualify for subsidies if they purchase health insurance on the ACA exchange. So far that has not happened. In a recent appearance on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday newsmagazine, HHS Secretary Tom Price, MD, said that he and his team are combing through the specifics of the ACA law, “asking the question, ‘does this help patients or does it harm patients? Does it increase costs or does it decrease costs?’”

There are more than 1400 instances in the law where the HHS Secretary has discretion to make changes, making the HHS the most likely source for any forthcoming health reform.

Republicans generally favor pushing more decision-making down to the states, and offering more choice to consumers. Dr Price has talked up a provision drafted by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that was included in the Senate’s plan. It would have given consumers the choice to purchase insurance that does not meet the ACA’s standard of the essential health benefits, but instead meets a given State’s definition of which service it deems essential. Coupled with the ability to grant state waivers for changes to the current law, many have suggested this could lead to consumers purchasing plans that do not cover most services.

“Dusting Off” The Old Way

The so-called Consumer Freedom Option is strongly opposed by the nation’s largest health insurers, which seemed to bewilder Secretary Price.

“It’s really perplexing, especially from the insurance companies, because all they have to do is dust off how they did business before Obamacare,” he said during the This Week interview. It is “exactly the kind of process that has been utilized for decades.”

Even though the Cruz provision went down with the rest of the Senate bill in July, it is not unreasonable to wonder if Secretary Price might try to figure out how to offer low-cost “skinny plans.” Or if Congress might do that same if and when health care moves back into the limelight.

This begs two questions:

  1. Can the United States ever go back to the way health insurance worked before the ACA, dusting things off, as Secretary Price suggested?
  2. Can selling insurance inside and outside of the ACA—as the Cruz provision envisioned—work?

Most industry experts offer a resounding “no” to both questions. As we have reported previously, it is difficult to take benefits away once they are given. For that reason, there is consensus that the ACA in some form or fashion is here to stay. There is also near universal agreement that certain parts of the ACA—notably the exchanges—need work. But experts also point out that provisions like Sen Cruz’s, that propose parallel systems where different rules apply, will not improve the exchanges, and indeed will likely hasten the so-called death spiral.

AHIP Objects, Actuaries Agree

In a July letter to Senate leaders, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) pointed out that even though the Cruz provision calls for a single risk pool, such a pool would be established “in name only. In fact, it creates two systems of insurance for healthy and sick people.”

A paper published this year by the American Academy of Actuaries, reinforces this claim.

“If insurers were able to compete under different issue, rating, or benefit coverage requirements, it could be more difficult to spread risks in the single risk pool…. Changes to market rules, such as increasing flexibility in cost-sharing requirements, could require only adjustments to the risk adjustment program. Other changes, such as loosening or eliminating the essential health benefit requirements, could greatly complicate the design and effectiveness of a risk adjustment program, potentially weakening the ability of the single risk pool to provide protections for those with preexisting conditions.”

Such a system, according to the paper, would effectively create two risk pools, and premiums in the ACA plans would be much higher than in those not subject to ACA regulations, leading to a destabilized ACA market. Moreover, things would get worse if people were allowed to move between plans depending on their health status.

Making the Problems Worse

The experts we spoke with agreed, citing the potential for confusion and flawed benefit design. Additionally, it does not adequately address the ACA exchange problems, and indeed may exacerbate them.

“The Cruz amendment would not likely achieve anything other than allowing young/healthy individuals to purchase cheaper, inadequate coverage at a lower price,” David Marcus, director of employee benefits at the National Railway Labor Conference, explained. “It would generally do nothing to lower premiums for ACA-compliant coverage.”

Gary Owens, MD, president of Gary Owens Associates, a medical management and pharmaceutical consultancy firm, implied that Cruz’s plan is a half-baked solution that most would have a difficult time navigating.

“This seems to just one more attempt to cobble together a solution to address the issue of healthcare access and coverage,” he said. “It would probably create more confusion for consumers about which plan is appropriate for their needs.”

Norm Smith, president of Viewpoint Consulting, Inc, which surveys managed markets decision-makers for the pharmaceutical industry, concurred.

“Many of the people buying these plans would not be able to define what’s covered, and what’s not,” he said. “Plans would be difficult for state insurance commissions to control without standardized benefit design.” He added that ACA plans would be crippled as younger, healthier people leave in favor of non-ACA coverage.

F Randy Vogenberg, PhD, RPh, principal at the Institute for Integrated Healthcare, said that the Cruz approach is a tepid response to what he sees as failure on the ACA exchanges.

“It has no merit because it does not address the need to change from the current exchange products,” he explained.

More Choice or Inadequate Coverage?

Proponents cite the fact that skinny plans give more choice to consumers, and that free-market principles are needed, vs increased government intervention. Mr Smith reminded us that the ACA—which is based on the Romney plan that became law in Massachusetts—already contains free-market components. For that reason, he said that introducing more choice could work in theory. However, in practice, “with the level of medical insurance literacy being so low, I’m not sure most members will understand what they are buying.”

Mr Marcus added that “The marketplace is already designed to have market principals, though the insurance that is available through [it] is limited to certain types of coverage.  Offering more choice means certain people can get cheaper plans, but those cheaper plans are generally inadequate methods of protecting against health costs.”

Dr Owens explained that health reform will take much more than simply going back to the way insurance was sold in the 1990s, or tacking piecemeal amendments onto the ACA one after the other.

“Trying to glue on a piecemeal solution is not the answer,” he said. “Congress needs to drop the partisan approaches, put together a real working group that will take the needed time and use the available expertise to develop a comprehensive plan that takes the ACA to the next level.”

New Consumer Expectations

In the end, a big reason that insurers cannot simply dust off their plans from the past may be due to customer preference. Consumers often feel hamstrung when it comes to buying appropriate, affordable coverage. Yet they possess more power than many believe, as evidenced by the backlash Washington lawmakers have faced at local town hall meetings. This, in large part, led to the downfall of ACA repeal efforts.

The term “pre-existing conditions” is now a part of almost every health consumer’s lexicon, and people do not expect to be shut out of the market or forced to buy an exorbitantly expensive plan just because they have such a condition. The ACA appears to have cemented that mindset.

Dr Owens explained that insurers are more eager to work within the already established system of regulations, as opposed to wading into uncharted regulations.

“I don’t think the insurers want to increase the complexity of the marketplace,” he said.

Mr Smith agreed, adding that there would need to be “an awful lot of explaining before members knew what they were buying.”

“Going back just doesn’t make sense,” Mr Marcus noted. “Insurance carriers have spent huge sums of money developing systems to comply with the ACA. Profits at the largest carriers are the highest they have ever been. Insured individuals now have an expectation for ACA market reforms to be continued, but the concept behind the Cruz amendment would not change that.”

Additionally, the health insurance industry as a whole is probably concerned about payers who would choose to sell substandard plans outside of the ACA exchanges. Consumers would be left “in a bind when they need to access coverage,”  Dr Owens said, which would not reflect well on the industry. — Dean Celia

High-Risk Pools for People with Preexisting Conditions: A Refresher Course

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http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/blog/2017/mar/high-risk-pools-preexisting-conditions

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During the recent effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), some members of Congress and the Trump administration seemed to be experiencing a certain nostalgia for high-risk pools, which operated in 35 states before the ACA was enacted. At a CNN Town Hall Meeting in January, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan responded to a question about coverage for people with preexisting conditions by saying:

We believe that state high-risk pools are a smart way of guaranteeing coverage for people with preexisting conditions. We had a really good one in Wisconsin. Utah had a great one . . . . What I mean when I say this is, about 8 percent of all the people under 65 have that kind of preexisting condition . . . . So, by financing state high-risk pools to guarantee people get affordable coverage when they have a preexisting condition, what you’re doing is, you’re dramatically lowering the price of insurance for everybody else. So, if we say let’s just, as taxpayers—and I agree with this—finance the coverage for those 8 percent of Americans under 65 in a condition like yours, they don’t have to be covered or paid for by their small business or their insurer who is buying the rates for the rest of the people in their insured pool, and you’d dramatically lower the price for the other 92 percent of Americans.

As high-risk pools and other changes to the ACA continue to be debated, it is critical to deconstruct statements such as these and remind ourselves of how high-risk pools really worked and how unaffordable they were. It is important to remember that high rates of uninsurance and lack of affordability for all buyers in the individual market existed before the ACA, even in states with high-risk pools. In addition, policymakers seem to substantially underestimate the number of Americans with preexisting conditions who might be forced to purchase coverage through a high-risk pool if insurers are allowed to deny coverage in the marketplace.

Affordability and Costs of State High-Risk Pool Coverage Pre-ACA

High-risk pools were expensive because they concentrated people with health conditions into a single pool, with no healthy members to offset their costs. As a result, out-of-pocket costs for enrollees were very high and coverage was often quite limited, as administrators sought to limit losses and lower premiums by imposing high deductibles and cost-sharing, as well as annual and lifetime coverage caps. In state high-risk pools operating before the ACA:

  • Premiums ranged from 125 percent to 200 percent of average premiums in the individual market, yet covered only about 53 percent of claims and administrative costs nationally (Wisconsin allowed premiums up to 200 percent of average).
  • Fourteen states had plans with deductibles of $10,000 per year or higher, substantially greater than the current maximum $7,150 deductible for catastrophic plans in the marketplaces.
  • Thirty states imposed maximum lifetime limits; others had annual coverage limits as low as $75,000 per year (Utah had both a lifetime and an annual limit).
  • In 2010, the 35 state high-risk pools incurred about $2.4 billion in total costs—to cover just 221,879 people.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently estimated that up to 17,875,000 people with preexisting conditions were uninsured in 2010. Had all of them been covered by high-risk pools, the cost would have been $194.8 billion in 2010 dollars, with premiums covering only $103.3 billion. Thus, states and the federal government would have needed to find $91.5 billion in additional funding to cover them all—much more than the up to $10 billion per year in federal assistance to states recently proposed by congressional Republicans.

Uninsured Rates When High-Risk Pools Were in Operation

In 2010, 32,939,000 people were uninsured in the 35 states that operated high-risk pools, and more than 47 million were uninsured nationally. In those states with high-risk pools, less than half of 1 percent of the total population was enrolled in them, and less than 1 percent of the uninsured population. That same year, The Commonwealth Fund found that 60 percent of people who shopped for health insurance in the individual market found it difficult or impossible to find a plan they could afford. This fact belies the claim that state high-risk pools made coverage for other people more affordable.

Percentage of Americans Under Age 65 with Preexisting Conditions

In the same Commonwealth Fund survey, more than one-third (35 percent) of those who sought insurance on the individual market reported being denied coverage or being charged a higher price because of a preexisting condition—certainly more than the 8 percent of people Speaker Ryan suggested would need to turn to high-risk pools for coverage. Indeed, based on federal survey data, HHS estimated that up to 51 percent of nonelderly Americans have preexisting conditions for which they could be denied coverage in the individual market.

Reality Check

The reality is that high-risk pool coverage was prohibitively expensive and there is little evidence to suggest that the existence of such pools made coverage less costly for others in the individual insurance market. Without substantially more federal funding than currently proposed, these facts are not likely to change. People with preexisting conditions may have “access” to coverage, but most will not be able to afford it and those who can will face limited benefits and extremely high deductibles and out-of-pocket payments.

Why and How to Avoid High-Risk Pools for Americans with Preexisting Conditions

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http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/blog/2017/jun/how-and-why-to-avoid-high-risk-pools

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The American Health Care Act (AHCA)—the U.S. House of Representatives’ bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—would allow states to apply for waivers to reduce existing consumer protections and provide funding for states to set up high-risk pools or other mechanisms for people with preexisting conditions who have lapses in their coverage. In previous posts, I have talked about the high costs and meager coverage associated with high-risk pools that operated before the ACA and the fact that their use did not significantly reduce costs for other people who buy their own health plans in the individual market. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the AHCA finds that the funding it makes available to states for the high-risk pools is inadequate.

In a recent commentary for Annals of Internal Medicine on high-risk pools, I note that people with preexisting conditions constitute roughly 51 percent of Americans. Here, let’s explore who might end up in a high-risk pool, what their experiences might be, and policymakers’ alternative options for stabilizing the marketplaces.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimated that 23 percent of Americans with preexisting conditions had a period of uninsurance in 2014, often because of job changes or periods of financial instability. Young people reaching age 26 who transition off their parents’ coverage also sometimes experienced gaps in coverage—and some of them have preexisting conditions. Should the AHCA become law, individuals with preexisting conditions and lapses in coverage who live in states that obtain waivers to allow insurers to charge people based on their health would likely end up in high-risk pools.

Research has shown that the greater out-of-pocket costs and limited coverage associated with high-risk pools led to enrollees forgoing needed care and experiencing worse outcomes. In fact, before the ACA, high-risk pool enrollees in Kansas were eight times more likely to transition to federal disability programs than members of the general population with these conditions.

Current Medicaid beneficiaries also would be affected. The Congressional Budget Office analysis of the AHCA estimated that 14 million fewer people would have Medicaid coverage as a result of the federal funding cuts. Many of them would be forced to look to the individual insurance market to gain coverage, yet half of these former Medicaid beneficiaries would have serious preexisting conditions. Given the historically very high costs for consumers associated with high-risk pools, the majority of these individuals would likely go uninsured instead. Many would end up using the emergency room to access care once their needs become urgent, and their uncompensated health care costs would be borne by others with insurance. Some would likely suffer serious health consequences, even preventable deaths.

Supporters of the AHCA suggest that the legislation gives states more options to design coverage for their citizens, thereby better meeting their needs. Section 1332 of the ACA, however, already gives states a great deal of flexibility in designing their marketplaces while still providing comprehensive and affordable coverage. Indeed, both Alaska and Minnesota are pursuing 1332 waiver programs to specifically address concerns about high-risk individuals by implementing reinsurance programs, rather than segregating people with preexisting conditions into high-risk pools. These programs would maintain the overall larger pool of insured people in the state while protecting insurers against catastrophic costs. Reinsurance programs, such as the one temporarily instituted under the ACA for its first three years, have historically been proven to bring down premium costs for everyone. Given that reinsurance programs are a more effective and evidence-based mechanism for stabilizing the individual insurance market, state policymakers should strongly consider pursuing these programs under the existing ACA rules instead of establishing high-risk pools. And, federal policymakers should acknowledge and support this mechanism to strengthen the marketplace, bring down costs, and encourage participation by insurers.

 

Who’s driving health care law – a free market or insurance companies?

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http://theconversation.com/republican-health-care-bills-defy-the-partys-own-ideology-80175?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20July%201%202017%20-%2077496134&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20July%201%202017%20-%2077496134+CID_7e419ab4ae6962d1afd6f9273e9cc417&utm_source=campaign_monitor_us&utm_term=Republican%20health%20care%20bills%20defy%20the%20partys%20own%20ideology

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Does this make economic sense?

Republicans may be too timid or lack the votes to advance structural reform. And they may feel it necessary to prop up insurance companies struggling with the costs of insuring high-risk patients. That’s a fair calculation.

But are they ready to create a health care system that aids every group except the working poor? The wealthy will have their health care and their tax cuts. The middle classes will continue to enjoy expensive, generous insurance that’s indirectly funded through the tax code. And insurance companies will accept whatever assistance the government provides – from tax cuts to coverage penalty periods – to continue increasing their authority over the medical system.

That’s an arrangement that leaves out the very groups that are most desperate for health care reform: lower-income families and the working poor.