Tag Archives: Medicare

Medicare Beneficiaries Feel The Pinch When They Can’t Use Drug Coupons

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

https://khn.org/news/medicare-beneficiaries-feel-the-pinch-when-they-cant-use-drug-coupons/

This week, I answered a grab bag of questions about drug copay coupons and primary care coverage on the health insurance marketplace.

Q: My doctor wants me to take Repatha for my high cholesterol, but my Medicare drug plan copayment for it is $618 a month. Why can’t I use a $5 drug copay coupon from the manufacturer? If I had commercial insurance, I could. I’m on a fixed income. How is this fair?

The explanation may offer you little comfort. Under the federal anti-kickback law, it’s illegal for drug manufacturers to offer people any type of payment that might persuade them to purchase something that federal health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid might pay for. The coupons can lead to unnecessary Medicare spending by inducing beneficiaries to choose drugs that are expensive.

“The law was intended to prevent fraud, but in this case it also has the effect of prohibiting Part D enrollees from using manufacturer copay coupons … because using the coupon would be steering Medicare’s business toward a particular entity,” said Juliette Cubanski, associate director of the Program on Medicare Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

The coupons typically offer patients with commercial insurance a break on their copayment for brand-name drugs, often reducing their out-of-pocket costs to what they would pay for inexpensive generic drugs. The coupons help make expensive specialty drugs more affordable for patients. They can also increase demand for the drugmaker’s products. If patients choose to use the coupons to buy a higher-cost drug over a generic, the insurer’s cost is likely to be more than what it would otherwise pay.

In addition, consumers should note that the copay cards often have annual maximums that leave patients on the hook for the entire copayment after a certain number of months, said Dr. Joseph Ross, associate professor of medicine and public health at Yale University who has studied copay coupons.

The coupons may discourage patients from considering appropriate lower-cost alternatives, including generics, said Leslie Fried, a senior director at the National Council on Aging.

According to a 2013 analysis co-authored by Ross and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 62 percent of 374 drug coupons were for brand-name drugs for which there were lower-cost alternatives available.

Q: Last year, my marketplace plan covered five primary care visits at no charge before I paid down my $2,200 deductible. This year, it doesn’t cover any appointments before the deductible, and I had to pay $80 out-of-pocket when I went to the doctor. Is that typical now? It makes me think twice about going.

Under the Affordable Care Act, marketplace plans are required to cover many preventive services, including an annual checkup, without charging consumers anything out-of-pocket. Beyond that, many marketplace plans cover services such as some primary care visits or generic drugs before you reach your deductible.

The likelihood of having a plan that offers some cost sharing for primary care before you reach your deductible (rather than requiring you to pay 100 percent of the cost until you hit that amount) varies significantly depending on whether you’re in a bronze, silver or gold plan, according to a recent analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

In 2018, 77 percent of silver-level plans offered some cost sharing for primary care visits before enrollees had paid off their typical deductible of $3,800, the analysis found. In most cases, that means people owe a copayment or coinsurance charge for each visit until they reach their deductible. A small number of plans offered a limited number of no-cost or low-cost visits first, and then people using more services either had to pay the full charge for each visit or owed cost sharing until the deductible was met.

Bronze plans were much stingier in what they offered for primary care before people reached their deductible, which was $6,400 or higher in half of plans. Only 38 percent of bronze plans offered any primary care coverage before the deductible, and generally patients still had to pay a copayment or coinsurace. A smaller percentage of bronze plans offered limited visits at no cost or low cost before the deductible.

The share of people who chose bronze plans grew from 23 percent in 2017 to 29 percent this year, said Katherine Hempstead, a senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. While premiums are typically significantly lower in bronze plans than other “metal”-level plans, it can be worthwhile to check out how plans handle primary care services before the deductible, she said.

 

 

Health Care Is an Investment, and the U.S. Should Start Treating It Like One

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

https://hbr.org/2018/04/health-care-is-an-investment-and-the-u-s-should-start-treating-it-like-one

apr18-03-rawpixel-com-577480-unsplash

We invest billions of dollars each year in medicines, new technologies, doctors, and hospitals — all with the goal of improving health, arguably our most prized commodity. Yet, investments in the U.S. health care system woefully underperform relative to those made in health care in other countries. For instance, the U.S. spends nearly 7–10% more of its national income on health care than other similar countries and yet life expectancy at birth remains, on average, two to three years lower.

To be sure, many factors influence health outcomes and the investments the health care system makes are only one input. But a large reason why investments in health care underperform is because we invest so much in services that are clearly low-value — i.e., offer little or no clinical benefit relative to the cost — and likely many more where the returns are gray. Investing limited health care dollars into low-value services crowds out our ability to spend on high-value services. So if we want to see better outcomes, we need to start to think like investors.

Examples of significant investments in low-value care services abound in the U.S. health care system, ranging from expensive imaging for benign medical conditions to routine pre-operative testing before low-risk surgeries like cataract surgery. Some research estimates that 42% of Medicare beneficiaries receive some form of low-value care.

Many factors contribute to our failure to disinvest from low-value services and invest more heavily in high-value services. For one thing, physicians, insurers, and patients often have limited data on the relative value of different health care services. There is an abundance of high-quality comparative effectiveness data for pharmaceuticals, largely because of the drug approval process, but there’s less data on the value of other expensive investments into health, such as doctor visits and hospitalizations. Put differently, there is no equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration for a large chunk of the health care sector, which means evidence on value in these sectors takes long to produce, in part because nobody requires that evidence to be generated. Furthermore, even when we have good evidence that a treatment or service is highly valuable, we frequently underuse it. Many medications for chronic conditions such as heart disease, e.g., statins, are routinely underused.

Physicians and businesses also generate income from performing low-value services. They may even be able to order these services themselves, effectively generating their own business. (For example, a cardiologist who performs and reads nuclear stress tests, which are frequently low value, has the ability to order these studies for his or her patient.) So reducing investments in low-value care services means spending less on doctors, hospitals, and other health care technologies. But, like pharmaceuticals, each of these entities is represented by powerful lobbyists (such as physician and hospital organizations), who will strongly oppose any steps to reduce payments.

Patients also frequently lack the information and ability to evaluate whether or not low value studies should be performed, and to hold their physicians accountable for choosing to provide low-value care. This issue is further complicated by the fact that labeling care as low-value is context dependent — advancing imaging for back pain is often not useful but sometimes it is. And moreover, some physicians may order unnecessary low-value testing because of the perceived threat of liability. Despite significant efforts to make physicians and patients aware of low-value services, we’ve observed little improvement in reigning in use.

Overinvesting in low-value services by physicians, payers, and patients leads to the underinvestment in high-value services. But affordability and timing is another critical issue that stymies investment in high-value care. Many high-value treatments take several years to yield significant health benefits. Because patients regularly change insurers, any individual insurer has less incentive to commit to investing in an expensive, high-value treatment if the return on investment could end up accruing to a competitor. Short-term budget constraints among both public and private insurers, and the fact that re-allocating resources away from low value services takes time, further limit investments in high-value services.

Consider, for example, the debate around the pricing of new Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) therapies. HCV is a chronic infectious disease that affects 3 million or more Americans. If untreated, HCV can cause liver dysfunction, liver failure, cirrhosis, and ultimately death. Until recently, the only available treatments for HCV were complex, multi-drug regimens with severe side effects and only modest efficacy. In the last half decade, however, several new HCV treatments have been developed with cure rates exceeding 90%. These new treatments typically cost $40,000-$50,000 per treatment course, but they have been shown to be cost effective over the long-term, as they can help patients avoid terminal liver disease, which is extremely expensive to treat, and reduce morbidity and mortality due to progressive liver disease.

Many physicians, experts in public health, and, of course, representatives of the pharmaceutical companies which produce these new treatments contend that these drugs should be made available to all patients with HCV who could benefit from them. But both private and public payers have raised objections over the price of these therapies, in large part because the population of patients who require treatment is so large. Payers contendthat they simply cannot afford to cover the cost of these drugs for all patients who are eligible for them and still provide coverage for other health care services that patients use. And state Medicaid agencies and small insurers frequently assert that short-term budget constraints prevent them from paying for costly, high value therapies like those for HCV.

In cases like this, it may be instructive to think about the circumstances through the lens of a portfolio manager who is choosing how to allocate investments. When given the opportunity to invest in an expensive asset, with high potential for significant future returns on investment, an investment manager would not pass it over due to lack of funds, because this capital could likely be acquired at a cost below the asset’s expected return. The manager would reduce holdings in investments with lower expected returns and re-allocate these funds into more promising investments. If the investment were valuable enough, the manager might even find ways to raise additional capital to invest in this asset.

In health care, this means at least two things: (1) wrestling with the factors that continue to promote use of low-value services (like lack of information and financial incentives for patients, and inappropriately structured financial incentives for physicians) and (2) recognizing that high-value investments often require large financial outlays today that ultimately reap future benefits.

Aside from reducing the use of low-value services, one potential solution is to identify and develop sources of long-term financing for high-value services. Mortgages exist to spread the costs of a home or a car out over a longer period of time, thereby allowing people to buy a product that they otherwise could not afford. Similar approaches could be used to help finance high-value health care investments that otherwise would be unaffordable.

For both public and private insurers, a long-term view should be feasible. State governments already rely heavily on capital markets to finance infrastructure investments and it’s quite possible that the returns on these investments fall below high-value health care investments like HCV drugs. Private insurers could also access private capital markets and design contracts with other insurers that allow them to partake in some of the long-term benefit of early high-value care when individuals switch between plans. For instance, an insurer that covers HCV therapy for an individual could, in theory, be compensated by future insurers, even Medicare, that treat that patient and benefit from that patient already being cured of HCV.

Ultimately, reducing investments in low-value care will require coordinated action from many actors. Patients and providers need more robust and up-to-date information on the value of different services. Insurers must look hard at the services they cover and discourage utilization of low-value services and encourage use of high-value services, even those that are high cost. Innovators developing new drugs, devices, and procedures should look beyond profits alone and incorporate the need to add value into their investments. And policymakers must create incentives for all of the above to consider value when making decisions about how to invest their health care dollars.

These actions are important because not only does underinvesting in high-value services make them less accessible, it may also make them less available in the future. Many expensive high-value treatments — like HCV therapies, new cancer treatments, and gene therapies — are the product of extensive research and development, which are undertaken because the expected returns are thought to exceed the known costs. A failure to reduce investments in low-value care and reinvest these resources in high-value therapies will reduce incentives to develop future therapies that can deliver significant value to patients.

 

 

 

‘What The Health?’ Medicaid, Privacy And Tom Price’s Return

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

https://khn.org/news/podcast-khns-what-the-health-medicaid-privacy-and-tom-prices-return/

Image result for KHN what the health?

 

President Donald Trump’s former New York doctor says Trump’s lawyer and private head of security “raided” his office and took the medical files relating to Trump, an act described by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as “standard operating procedure.” Except that’s not how the federal health privacy law is supposed to work.

Meanwhile, Seema Verma, who heads the federal agency in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, met with reporters for a wide-ranging discussion of states’ efforts to remake their Medicaid programs and the administration’s goals of encouraging people to work to help lift them out of poverty.

Plus, Robert Blendon, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and its T.H. Chan School of Public Health, talks about how health issues fit into the complex politics of the 2018 midterm elections.

This week’s panelists for KHN’s “What the Health?” are Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Joanne Kenen of Politico, Alice Ollstein of Talking Points Memo and Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times.

Among the takeaways from this week’s podcast:

  • Five states are seeking permission from federal officials to impose a lifetime limit on Medicaid eligibility. But despite the many changes the Trump administration officials have been making to Medicaid, they have shown no public interest in this yet.
  • Trump is considering regulations that would defund Planned Parenthood from the Title X Family Planning Program. Although anti-abortion groups would applaud such a move, it could backfire on the Republicans in November by energizing a wave of blue voters in the midterm elections.
  • Although former HHS Secretary Tom Price raised eyebrows this week with his comment disparaging the removal of the penalty for not having insurance, that stance is somewhat consistent with the administration’s earlier promise to find new ways to regulate the insurance markets.

Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists recommend their favorite health stories of the week they think you should read, too.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar to Supreme Court: Time to rule on Medicare case that affects $4 billion

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

http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/hs-secretary-alex-azar-supreme-court-time-rule-medicare-case-affects-4-billion?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTXpGak1qTmhNbVUxWVRsaSIsInQiOiJwQlwvU1ZxcTU2bExreng4NXpEZ0Q2WkRYeldUbzlNM3kwWlJFeER5WlwvS3NqQ0lvMFwveHVNRExjdmVkdkRNMTBOb3FlZlwvOUJIMTYzR0tVWlNlcDJWMlRkMVM4TzZCK1I3XC9NSkFkc1U5QjhYaTZXKzhaUnY0M2RKNGNubTR5dk84In0%3D

HHS Secretary Alex Azar Credit: Chris Kleponis-Pool, Getty Images

HHS Secretary Alex Azar

Lower court’s decision about disproportionate share hospital payments undermines the ability HHS has to administer Medicare reimbursement, Azar says.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review an appeals court case won by numerous hospitals over disproportionate share hospital payments.

Azar said the decision affects between $3 and $4 billion in Medicare funding and therefore, the Supreme Court’s review is warranted.

At issue is whether the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services needed to go through a notice and comment rulemaking to get stakeholder feedback before deciding on its own to include Medicare Advantage beneficiaries in its calculations for DSH payments.

Medicare pays hospitals for providing inpatient care and gives an additional payment known as disproportionate share hospital adjustment to hospitals that serve a significantly disproportionate number of low-income patients.

The payment is based on two percentages. The first is a Medicare fraction, which is calculated using the number of patient days for patients who are entitled to benefits under Medicare Part A and for supplemental Social Security income benefits.

The second percent includes patient days attributable to patients who are not entitled to benefits under Medicare Part A.

Medicare Advantage, or Medicare Part C, established in 1997, allows individuals to receive benefits under Parts A and B through enrollment in a private MA plan.

Prior to 2004, CMS did not count a hospital’s Medicare Part C patient days when calculating the Medicare fraction used to determine DSH payments. Starting in 2004, CMS made a decision on its own interpretation of a rule and determined Part C patients were entitled to benefits under Medicare Part A within the meaning of Medicare-fraction provisions.

Hospitals challenged CMS’ interpretation done without notice and comment rulemaking. A district court sided with the government, but in 2017 the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia ruled with the hospitals.

The appeals court said HHS needed notice and comment rulemaking before providing Medicare Administrative Contractors the payment calculation that is passed on to hospitals.

The decision undermines its ability to administer the annual Medicare reimbursement process in a workable manner, HHS said.

“The D.C. Circuit’s contrary decision would significantly impair HHS’s ability to administer annual Medicare reimbursements through the MACs that act on its behalf,” the Supreme Court filing said. “It would also impose significant costs on the government. Just with respect to the Medicare-fraction issue in this case, the decision below affects between $3 and $4 billion in Medicare funding.”

Solicitor General Noel Francisco filed the petition in April on behalf of Azar, against health systems Allina Health Services, doing business as United Hospital, Unity Hospital and Abbott Northwestern Hospital; Florida Health Sciences Center dba Tampa General Hospital; Montefiore Medical Center; Mount Sinai Medical Center of Florida dba Mount Sinai Medical Center; New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens; New York Methodist Hospital; and New York Presbyterian Hospital and New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center.

 

Congress Urged To Cut Medicare Payments To Many Stand-Alone ERs

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

https://khn.org/news/congressional-advisers-urge-medicare-payments-to-many-stand-alone-ers-be-cut/

The woman arrived at the emergency department gasping for air, her severe emphysema causing such shortness of breath that the physician who examined her put her on a ventilator immediately to help her breathe.

The patient lived across the street from the emergency department in suburban Denver, said Dr. David Friedenson, who cared for her that day a few years ago. The facility wasn’t physically located at a hospital but was affiliated with North Suburban Medical Center several miles away.

Free-standing emergency departments have been cropping up in recent years and now number more than 500, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), which reports to Congress. Often touted as more convenient, less crowded alternatives to hospitals, they often attract suburban walk-in patients with good insurance whose medical problems are less acute than those who visit an emergency room located in a hospital.

If a recent MedPAC proposal is adopted, however, some providers predict that these free-standing facilities could become scarcer. Propelling the effort are concerns that MedPAC’s payment for services at these facilities is higher than it should be since the patients who visit them are sometimes not as severely injured or ill as those at on-campus facilities.

The proposal would reduce Medicare payment rates by 30 percent for some services at hospital-affiliated free-standing emergency departments that are located within 6 miles of an on-campus hospital emergency department.

“There has been a growth in free-standing emergency departments in urban areas that does not seem to be addressing any particular access need for emergency care,” said James Mathews, executive director of MedPAC. The convenience of a neighborhood emergency department may even induce demand, he said, calling it an “if you build it, they will come” effect.

Emergency care is more expensive than a visit to a primary care doctor or urgent care center, in part because emergency departments have to be on standby 24/7, with expensive equipment and personnel ready to handle serious car accidents, gunshot wounds and other trauma cases. Even though free-standing emergency departments have lower standby costs than hospital-based facilities, they typically receive the same Medicare rate for emergency services. The Medicare “facility fee” payments, which include some ancillary lab and imaging services but not reimbursement to physicians, are designed to help defray hospitals’ overhead costs.

The proposal would affect only payments for Medicare beneficiaries. But private insurers often consider Medicare payment policies when setting their rules.

According to a MedPAC analysis of five markets — Charlotte, N.C.; Cincinnati; Dallas; Denver; and Jacksonville, Fla. — 75 percent of the free-standing facilities were located within 6 miles of a hospital with an emergency department. The average drive time to the nearest hospital was 10 minutes.

Overall, the number of outpatient emergency department visits by Medicare beneficiaries increased 13.6 percent per capita from 2010 to 2015, compared with a 3.5 percent growth in physician visits, according to MedPAC. (The reported data doesn’t distinguish between conventional and free-standing emergency facility visits.)

“I think [the MedPAC proposal] is a move in the right direction,” said Dr. Renee Hsia, a professor of emergency medicine and health policy at the University of California-San Francisco who has written about free-standing emergency departments. “We have to understand there are limited resources, and the fixed costs for stand-alone EDs are lower.”

Hospital representatives say the proposal could cause some free-standing emergency departments to close their doors.

“We are deeply concerned that MedPAC’s recommendation has the potential to reduce patient access to care, particularly in vulnerable communities, following a year in which hospital EDs responded to record-setting natural disasters and flu infections,” Joanna Hiatt Kim, vice president for payment policy at the American Hospital Association, said in a statement.

Independent free-standing emergency departments that are not affiliated with a hospital would not be affected by the MedPAC proposal. These facilities,which make up about a third of all free-standing emergency facilities, aren’t clinically integrated with a hospital and can’t participate in the Medicare program.

The MedPAC proposal will be included in the group’s report to Congress in June.

Even though stand-alone emergency facilities might not routinely treat patients with serious trauma, they can provide lifesaving care, proponents say.

Friedenson said that for his emphysema patient, avoiding the 15- to 20-minute drive to the main hospital made a critical difference.

“By stopping at our emergency department, I truly think her life was saved,” he said.

 

 

Ascension’s decision to cut back services stirs debate among Milwaukee officials

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

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/ascension-s-decision-to-cut-back-services-stirs-debate-among-milwaukee-officials.html

Image result for wheaton franciscan st joseph

Milwaukee officials are urging Ascension Wisconsin to postpone its controversial scale back of services at Milwaukee-based Wheaton Franciscan-St. Joseph Hospital, which primarily serves a low-income neighborhood, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.

St. Joseph Hospital, which primarily serves patients covered by Medicare and Medicaid, plans to shutter its surgical and medical units, slowly sifting out inpatient care by July 1. Roughly 51 percent of the hospital’s patients are covered by Medicaid, 5 percent are uninsured and about 20 percent are covered by commercial health plans.

The closure of the surgical and medical units would leave no general acute care hospital north of downtown Milwaukee, an area plagued with widespread health disparities. Ascension, however, emphasized it is not leaving the city. Another Ascension hospital, Milwaukee-based Columbia St. Mary’s, is located 5.6 miles southeast of St. Joseph’s.

“We aren’t abandoning where low-income [patients] live, we are actually strengthening our ability to serve the people that live in the city of Milwaukee by combining the efforts of Columbia St. Mary’s and St. Joe’s,” Bernie Sherry, senior vice president who oversees the Wisconsin market of St. Louis-based Ascension Health, told Becker’s Hospital Review.

Since Ascension disclosed it would stop providing surgical and inpatient care at St. Joseph Hospital April 5, the health system has received criticism from multiple city officials and residents.

“We have an economic model now where if you have money, you’re going to get the best healthcare in the world, but if you’re poor, guess what? Get on a bus, hopefully you can get to a hospital five miles away and maybe you’ll get healthcare,” Milwaukee Alderman Michael Murphy told WPR. Mr. Murphy also emphasized that the implications of reducing services at St. Joseph go beyond the individual hospital.

Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan is asking Ascension to delay the closure of these units by one year to collect community feedback and find ways to mitigate the loss of services prior to phasing them out.

“If this request is rejected, I have already contacted the Office of the City Attorney and have asked them to watch carefully the process followed by Ascension to ensure that at a minimum, the corporation is in full and exact compliance with applicable state and federal laws and regulations,” said Mr. Donovan, according to WPR.

St. Joseph is part of Milwaukee-based Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, which merged with St. Louis-based Ascension in 2016.

Banner Health settles whistleblower case for $18 million

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

https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/health/2018/04/12/banner-health-settles-whistleblower-case-18-million/511848002/

Image result for Banner Health settles whistleblower case for $18 million

 

Banner Health has agreed to pay more than $18 million to settle whistleblower claims that the Phoenix-based health system admitted patients who could have been treated less expensively at outpatient facilities.

The settlement resolves a whistleblower case brought by a former Banner Health employee who claimed one dozen hospitals in Arizona and Colorado overcharged Medicare for brief, inpatient procedures that should have been billed on a less costly outpatient basis, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona said.

The settlement resolves allegations that Arizona’s largest health provider “inflated in reports to Medicare the number of hours for which patients received outpatient observation care during this time period,” according to a statement from the federal prosecutors.

The settlement involved Medicare billing at one dozen hospitals from November 2007 through December 2016.

The case was brought by former Banner Health employee Cecilia Guardiola under the federal False Claims Act, which allows individuals to bring lawsuits on behalf of the government and collect a portion of any settlement. Under terms of the settlement, Guardiola will be paid $3.3 million.

Banner Health said in a statement that the settlement does not include any findings of wrongdoing and allows the system to avoid the costs and disruption of ongoing litigation.

“Banner Health is fully committed to adhering to all legal and regulatory requirements and providing patients with the highest quality of care,” the statement read. “Although the rules that dictate when a hospital can accommodate a physician’s request to admit a Medicare patient are complex and evolving, our policy has always been to make those decisions in accordance with government guidelines.”

Guardiola, a registered nurse and a law school graduate, was hired by Banner Health in October 2012 as a director overseeing clinical documentation. She resigned three months later after she determined her efforts to bring “ethical compliance” would be ineffective, according to a statement issued by Kreindler & Associates, a law firm representing Guardiola.

During her brief stint at Banner, Guardiola evaluated Banner’s clinical documentation as well as short-stay inpatient claims.

She discovered that Banner hospitals billed an “inordinate and improper number of short-stay claims, particularly those for expensive cardiac procedures,” according to the statement.

In all, she discovered more than 650 examples of Banner billing Medicare for an inpatient claim even though the patient was admitted and discharged the same day, the statement said.

She also discovered that two hospitals, Banner Boswell and Banner Del Webb, identified some cardiac procedures as urgent rather than elective to prevent claims from being denied, the statement said.

California Aims To Tackle Health Care Prices In Novel Rate-Setting Proposal

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

California Aims To Tackle Health Care Prices In Novel Rate-Setting Proposal

Backed by labor and consumer groups, a California lawmaker unveiled a proposal Monday calling for the state to set health care prices in the commercial insurance market.

Supporters of the legislation, called the Health Care Price Relief Act, say California has made major strides in expanding health insurance coverage, but recent changes haven’t addressed the cost increases squeezing too many families.

To remedy this, Assembly Bill 3087 calls for an independent, nine-member state commission to set health care reimbursements for hospitals, doctors and other providers in the private-insurance market serving employers and individuals.

The bill faces formidable opposition from physician groups and hospitals.

“No state in America has ever attempted such an unproven policy of inflexible, government-managed price caps across every health care service,” Ted Mazer, president of the California Medical Association, said in a statement.

At a press conference Monday, Assembly member Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) and other sponsors of the bill said the commission would use Medicare reimbursements as a benchmark and then factor in providers’ operating costs, geography and a reasonable amount of profit to establish rates. More details on the legislation are expected during committee hearings.

Across the country, some employers have tried a similar approach by mostly sidestepping insurers and instead paying providers 125 to 150 percent of the Medicare price for any service. Proponents of this idea say it eliminates the worst abuses in billing, reduces administrative costs and promotes price transparency.

The California legislation envisions a system similar to the rate-setting done for public utilities.

The proposal also borrows from Maryland, which has set prices for hospital services since the 1970s.

“We have given free rein to medical monopolies — to insurers, doctors and hospitals — to charge out-of-control prices,” said Sara Flocks, policy coordinator at the California Labor Federation, which is co-sponsoring the bill, at the Monday news conference. “It’s not that we go to the doctor too much. It’s because the price is too much.”

Kalra, the assemblyman who introduced the bill, said consumers deserve relief now because soaring medical costs are eating up workers’ wages and contributing to income inequality.

“The status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable. Californians struggling to keep up demand action rather than politics as usual,” Kalra said at the news conference.

Health care providers immediately slammed the proposal, saying it would reduce patients’ access to care and drive medical providers out of the state.

Mazer countered that the bill would cause “an exodus of practicing physicians, which would exacerbate our physician shortage and make California unattractive to new physician recruits.”

Chad Terhune, a senior correspondent at California Healthline and Kaiser Health News, discussed the latest proposal and its future prospects with A Martinez, host of the “Take Two” show on Southern California Public Radio.

 

Five Worrisome Trends in Healthcare

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

https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/healthpolicy/72001?xid=fb_o_

healthcare; insurance; drugs; drug companies; Government-run Insurance Program Sure to Backfire | iHaveNet.com

A reckoning is coming, outgoing BlueCross executive says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Health Care and the 2018 Midterms, Attitudes Towards Proposed Changes to Medicaid

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

Kaiser Health Tracking Poll – February 2018: Health Care and the 2018 Midterms, Attitudes Towards Proposed Changes to Medicaid

 

KEY FINDINGS:
  • Medicaid continues to be seen favorably by a majority of the public (74 percent) and about half (52 percent) believe the Medicaid program is working well for most low-income people covered by the program.
  • When asked about proposed changes to the Medicaid program, attitudes are largely driven by party identification. A large majority of Democrats (84 percent) and most independents (64 percent) oppose lifetime limits for Medicaid benefits, while Republicans are more divided in their views with half (51 percent) believing Medicaid should only be available for a limited amount of time.

    Poll: Public split on whether adding work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries aims at reducing spending (41%) or lifting people out of poverty (33%) 

  • Party identification also drives views on what individuals believe is the main reason behind some states imposing Medicaid work requirements. A larger share of Democrats and independents believe the main reason for these work requirements is to reduce government spending (42 percent and 45 percent, respectively) than believe it is to help lift people out of poverty (26 percent and 31 percent). On the other hand, a similar share of Republicans say it is to reduce government spending (40 percent) as say it is to help lift people out of poverty (42 percent). Individuals living in states pursuing Medicaid work requirements are also divided on the main reason for these limits, even when controlling for party identification.

    54% of the public now holds favorable views of the Affordable Care Act – the highest share in more than 80 tracking polls 

  • The February Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds a slight increase in the share of the public who say they have a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), from 50 percent in January 2018 to 54 percent this month. This is the highest level of favorability of the ACA measured in more than 80 Kaiser Health Tracking Polls since 2010. This change is largely driven by independents, with more than half (55 percent) now saying they have a favorable opinion of the law compared to 48 percent last month. Large majorities (83 percent) of Democrats continue to view the law favorably (including six in ten who now say they hold a “very favorable” view, up from 48 percent last month) while nearly eight in ten Republicans (78 percent) view the law unfavorably (unchanged from last month).
  • The majority of the public are either unaware that the ACA’s individual mandate has been repealed (40 percent) or are aware that it has been repealed but incorrectly think the requirement is not in effect in 2018 (21 percent). Few (13 percent) are aware the requirement has been repealed but is still in effect for 2018.
  • More than twice as many voters mention health care costs (22 percent) as mention repealing/opposing the ACA (7 percent) as the top health care issue they most want to hear 2018 candidates discuss in their campaigns. Health care costs are the top issue mentioned by Democratic voters (16 percent) and independent voters (25 percent), as well as one of the top issues mentioned by Republican voters (22 percent), followed by repealing or opposing the ACA (17 percent).

2018 Midterm Elections

With still a few months until the midterm elections are in full swing, the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds health care costs as the top health care issue mentioned by voters when asked what they want to hear 2018 candidates discuss. When asked to say in their own words what health care issue they most want to hear the candidates talk about during their upcoming campaigns, one-fifth (22 percent) of registered voters mention health care costs. This is followed by a series of other health care issues, such as Medicare/senior concerns (8 percent), repealing or opposition to the Affordable Care Act (7 percent), improve how health care is delivered (7 percent), increasing access/decreasing the number of uninsured (6 percent), or a single-payer system (5 percent). Health care costs is the top issue mentioned by Democratic voters (16 percent) and independent voters (25 percent), as well as one of the top issues mentioned by Republican voters (22 percent), followed by repealing or opposing the ACA (17 percent).

Figure 1: Health Care Costs Are Top Health Care Issue Voters Want 2018 Candidates to Talk About During Their Campaigns

Battleground Voters

Health care costs are also the top issue mentioned by voters living where there are competitive House, Senate, or Governor races. One-fourth (23 percent) of voters in areas with competitive elections mention health care costs when asked what health care issue they most want to hear candidates talk about. Fewer mention other health care issues such as improve how health care is delivered (9 percent) or increasing access/decreasing the number of uninsured (6 percent).

2018 Midterm Election Analysis

As part of Kaiser Family Foundation’s effort to examine the role of health care in the 2018 midterm elections, throughout the year we will be tracking the views of voters – paying special attention to those living in states or congressional districts in which both parties have a viable path to win the election. This group, referred to in our analysis as “voters in battlegrounds” is defined by the 2018 Senate, House, and Governor ratings provided by The Cook Political Report. Congressional and Governor races categorized as “toss-up” were included in this group. A complete list of the states and congressional districts included in the comparison group is available in Appendix A.

The Affordable Care Act

This month’s Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds a slight increase in the share of the public who say they have a favorable view of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA). The share of the public who say they hold a favorable view of the law has increased to 54 percent (from 50 percent in January 2018) while 42 percent currently say they hold an unfavorable view. This is the highest level of favorability of the ACA measured in more than 80 Kaiser Health Tracking Polls since 2010.  This change is largely driven by independents, with more than half (55 percent) now saying they have a favorable opinion of the law compared to 48 percent last month. Large majorities (83 percent) of Democrats continue to view the law favorably (including six in ten who now say they hold a “very favorable” view, up from 48 percent last month) while nearly eight in ten Republicans (78 percent) view the law unfavorably (unchanged from last month).

Figure 2: More of the Public Hold a Favorable View of the ACA

Public Awareness of the Repeal of the ACA’s Individual Mandate

The February Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds a slight uptick (from 36 percent in January 2018 to 41 percent this month) in the share of the public who are aware that the ACA’s requirement that nearly all individuals have health insurance or else pay a fine, known commonly as the individual mandate, has been repealed. Yet, misunderstandings persist. The majority of the public (61 percent) are either unaware that this requirement has been repealed (40 percent) or are aware that it has been repealed but incorrectly think the requirement is not in effect in 2018 (21 percent of total). Few (13 percent) are aware the requirement has been repealed but is still in effect for 2018.

Figure 3: Confusion Remains on the Status of the ACA’s Individual Mandate

Medicaid

In recent months, President Trump’s administration has supported state efforts to make changes to their Medicaid programs, the government health insurance and long-term care program for low-income adults and children. Seven in ten Americans say they have ever had a connection to the Medicaid program either directly through their own health insurance coverage (32 percent) or their child being covered by the program (9 percent), or indirectly through a friend or family member covered by the program (29 percent).

Figure 4: Seven in Ten Americans Say They Have Ever Had A Connection to Medicaid

Majority of the Public Holds Favorable Views of Medicaid and Thinks the Program is Working Well

Overall, the majority of the public (74 percent) holds favorable views of Medicaid, including four in ten who have a “very favorable” view. About one-fifth of the public (21 percent) hold unfavorable views of the program. Unlike attitudes towards the ACA, opinions towards Medicaid are not drastically different among partisans and majorities across parties report favorable views. However, a larger share of Republicans do hold unfavorable views (29 percent) compared to independents (21 percent) or Democrats (13 percent).

Figure 5: Large Shares Across Parties Say They Have a Favorable Opinion of Medicaid

In addition, more believe the program is working well than not working well for most low-income people covered by the program. This holds true across partisans with about half saying the Medicaid program is “working well” and about one-third saying it is “not working well.”

Figure 6: Larger Shares Say Medicaid Is Currently Working Well for Most Low-Income People Covered by the Program

Support for Medicaid Expansion in Non-Expansion States

One of the major changes brought on by the ACA was the option for states to expand Medicaid to cover more low-income people. As of February 2018, 18 states have not expanded their Medicaid programs.

Figure 7: Status of Medicaid Expansion Among States

Among individuals living in states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs, most (56 percent) say they think their state should expand Medicaid to cover more low-income uninsured people while four in ten (37 percent) say their state should keep Medicaid as it is today. Slightly more than half of Republicans living in non-expansion states say their state should keep Medicaid as it is today (54 percent) while four in ten (39 percent) say their state should expand their Medicaid program. Majorities of Democrats (75 percent) and independents (57 percent) say their state should expand their Medicaid program.

Figure 8: Democrats and Independents Are More Likely to Want Their State to Expand Medicaid Than Republicans

Proposed Changes to Medicaid

SECTION 1115 WORK REQUIREMENT WAIVERS

In January, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provided new guidance for Section 1115 waivers, which would allow states to impose work requirements for individuals to be covered by Medicaid benefits. As of February 21, CMS has approved work requirement waivers in two states (KY and IN) and eight other states have pending requests.1 When asked what they think the reasoning is behind these proposed changes to Medicaid, a larger share of the public (41 percent) believe the main reason is to reduce government spending by limiting the number of people on the program than say the main reason is to help lift people out of poverty (33 percent). There are differences among demographic groups with a larger share of Democrats and independents believing the main reason is to reduce government spending, while Republicans are more divided with similar shares saying the main reason is to lift people out of poverty (42 percent) as reduce government spending (40 percent).

Figure 9: Republicans Are Divided on the Main Reason Behind the Trump Administration Permitting Work Requirements

There are also differences between individuals living in states that have either filed a Medicaid waiver for a work requirement or have had a waiver approved and those living in states that do not have Medicaid work requirement waivers pending or approved.2 Individuals living in states with pending or approved Medicaid work requirements are divided on whether the main reason for these limits is to lift people out of poverty (37 percent) or reduce government spending (36 percent). This holds true even when controlling for other demographic variables such as party identification and income that may influence beliefs.

Figure 10: Those in States with Medicaid Work Requirements Are Divided on the Main Reason Behind Them

SECTION 1115 LIFETIME LIMIT WAIVERS

In addition to work requirement waivers, five states are currently seeking waivers from the Trump administration to impose Medicaid coverage limits. These “lifetime limits” would cap Medicaid health care benefits for non-disabled adults. When asked how they think Medicaid should work, two-thirds of the public say Medicaid should be available to low-income people for as long as they qualify, without a time limit, while one-third say it should only be available to low-income people for a limited amount of time in order to provide temporary help. The vast majority of Democrats (84 percent) and most independents (64 percent) say Medicaid should be available without lifetime limits, while Republicans are divided with similar shares saying they favor time limits (51 percent) as saying they do not favor such limits (47 percent). Seven in ten (71 percent) of individuals who have ever had a connection to Medicaid say they do not support lifetime limits compared to three in ten (28 percent) who say it should only be available for a limited amount of time in order to provide temporary help.

Figure 11: Majorities of Democrats and Independents Say Medicaid Should Be Available Without a Time Limit; Republicans Are Divided