Tag Archives: Out of Pocket Expenses

Public blames everyone for high health costs

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Kaiser Health Tracking Poll – Late Summer 2018: The Election, Pre-Existing Conditions, and Surprises on Medical Bills

Health care costs remain a leading issue ahead of this year’s midterms, and voters have plenty of blame to go around, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest tracking poll.

  • Kaiser asked its respondents whether certain factors are a “major reason” health care costs are rising. (There could be multiple “major reasons.”)
  • Blame for the potential political culprits — the ACA and the Trump administration — was split about evenly.
  • But there’s a broader bipartisan agreement that industry is to blame: At least 70% faulted drug companies, hospitals and insurers. Doctors caught a break, at 49%.

Partisanship reigns, though, on the question of whether President Trump will help.

  • A mere 13% of Democrats are at least somewhat confident that Americans will pay less for prescription drugs under the Trump administration, compared with a whopping 83% of Republicans. Independents generally share Democrats’ skepticism.
  • Roughly a quarter of Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans, think Trump’s public criticism of drug companies will help bring down prices.

Surprise hospital bills haven’t attracted the same political uproar as prescription drug costs, but the Kaiser poll provides more reason to believe they could be the next big controversy.

  • 67% said they’re “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about being unable to pay a surprise medical bill, while 53% fear they won’t be able to pay their deductible and 45% are afraid of the tab for their prescription drugs.
  • 39% experienced a surprise bill in the past year.

 

 

 

New Accumulator Adjustment Programs Threaten Chronically Ill Patients

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https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20180824.55133/full/?utm_term=Read%20More%20%2526gt%3B%2526gt%3B&utm_campaign=Health%20Affairs%20Sunday%20Update&utm_content=email&utm_source=Act-On_2018-08-05&utm_medium=Email&cm_mmc=Act-On%20Software-_-email-_-Individual%20Mandate%20Litigation%3B%20Housing%20And%20Equitable%20Health%20Outcomes%3B%20Simplifying%20The%20Medicare%20Plan%20Finder%20Tool-_-Read%20More%20%2526gt%3B%2526gt%3B

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For too many Americans with chronic illnesses, such as HIV, arthritis, and hemophilia, insurance companies and their pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are erecting access barriers to innovative and life-saving prescription medicines. A new and growing trend—called accumulator adjustment programs—threatens to exacerbate the problem by significantly increasing out-of-pocket spending for patients. On top of it, patients are not even aware of this sudden and very costly change.

Patients with chronic illnesses already jump through hoops to receive their drugs. First, they have to ensure that their medicines are covered by their plan. Then they often have to work through a series of utilization management steps, such as prior authorization and step-therapy.

On top of those hurdles, more and more patients are facing high deductibles for prescription drugs or are being asked to pay a percentage of the cost of a drug, which is called coinsurance, instead of a nominal copayment. Coinsurance and deductibles often require patients to pay cost sharing based on the list price, which does not reflect the rebates that the PBMs receive from the drug companies.

When patients are still satisfying their deductible or are paying high coinsurance, they can face out-of-pocket spending of thousands of dollars to fill one prescription. If they cannot afford these costs, they will leave the pharmacy counter empty-handed and risk becoming sick or getting sicker. Drug manufacturers offer coupons to prevent this and make cost sharing for these drugs affordable. Historically, commercial insurance plans have applied the value of these coupons to a patient’s annual deductible and out-of-pocket maximum; reaching these limits translates into lower out-of-pocket spending for the rest of the year.

Now, however, accumulator adjustment programs are currently being pushed by PBMs, such as Express Scripts and CVS Caremark, to insurers including United Healthcare, Molina, and BlueCross BlueShield of Texas and Illinois, and to large employers such as Walmart, Home Depot, and Allstate. These programs change the calculus for patients by no longer applying the copay coupons to patient deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums. Patients must spend more out of pocket to reach their deductible; sometimes thousands of dollars more. For too many patients, this makes the drugs they depend on unaffordable.

While there has been an ongoing debate between the insurance industry and the drug companies regarding who is responsible for the high cost of some medications, this new practice has nothing to do with the actual cost of the drug. The only thing that has changed is how much the insurance company, employer, or PBM is requiring patients to pay for their drug. And these entities are beginning to implement accumulator adjustment programs without adequately informing beneficiaries, who will be shocked to learn that the cost-sharing assistance they have been relying on no longer applies toward their deductible or out-of-pocket costs.

People living with HIV and hepatitis have long relied on these copay coupons to afford the cost of their medications. The impact on a countless number of peoples’ lives has been profound. But this new practice will increase patient out-of-pocket spending, leaving patients at risk of hitting a “cost cliff” mid-year. This cliff could cause disruptions to patients’ care as medication becomes prohibitively expensive. For people living with HIV, hepatitis, and so many other health conditions, the resulting decision can literally mean life or death.

While some may claim that coupons are being used to incentivize brand-name drugs over generics, the fact is 87 percent of the coupons are for drugs that have no generic equivalent. The 13 percent of branded drugs programs in which generic equivalent products are available accounted for only 0.05 percent of all prescriptions filled.

There is a relatively new drug regimen, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP), that when taken regularly, prevents HIV. Because there is no generic alternative, most patients can’t afford the high coinsurance and rely on manufacturer copay assistance to reach their deductible and lighten the burden. This new practice of no longer applying the copay coupons to patient deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums by the insurance companies and PBMs are making access to this remarkable treatment more difficult and will have a significant impact on our efforts to prevent HIV in the United States.

But it does not have to be like this. The growing practice of not counting copay coupons toward a beneficiary’s deductible most likely stems from PBMs, insurers, and human resources professionals, who sign off on these plans, failing to fully comprehend the impact these programs will have on vulnerable patient populations and the overall health care system.

Patient groups and employees across the country should reach out to their health insurance providers and workplace plan managers to check whether their plan is implementing this new troubling practice. And if they are, people need to speak up and push back. These new insurance practices are not acceptable and bad for the health of our country.

 

 

 

Senators Consider Dueling Bills Over Texas Individual Mandate Litigation

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https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20180828.283008/full/?utm_term=Read%20More%20%2526gt%3B%2526gt%3B&utm_campaign=Health%20Affairs%20Sunday%20Update&utm_content=email&utm_source=Act-On_2018-08-05&utm_medium=Email&cm_mmc=Act-On%20Software-_-email-_-Individual%20Mandate%20Litigation%3B%20Housing%20And%20Equitable%20Health%20Outcomes%3B%20Simplifying%20The%20Medicare%20Plan%20Finder%20Tool-_-Read%20More%20%2526gt%3B%2526gt%3B

Litigation in Texas over the constitutionality of the individual mandate and, with it, the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) is receiving more and more attention in Congress. On August 23, 2018, Republican Senators released new legislation that they believe would help blunt the impact of a ruling for the plaintiffs in Texas v. United States. The stated aim of the bill is to “guarantee” equal access to health care coverage regardless of health status or preexisting conditions. However, in the event that the court agrees with the plaintiffs—or even just the Trump administration—the legislation leaves significant gaps.

At the same time, Democratic Senators had their efforts to potentially intervene in the litigation rebuffed during the debate over a recent appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), Education, and Defense. With a hearing on Texas scheduled for September 5, 2018—the same time as hearings are set to begin in Congress over the confirmation of D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court—attention on the case is only likely to increase.

Brief Background On Texas

In Texas, 20 Republican state attorneys general and two individual plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of the individual mandate, which was zeroed out by Congress beginning in 2019. Without the penalty, the plaintiffs argue that the mandate is unconstitutional. Because the mandate cannot be severed from the rest of the law, they believe the entire ACA should also be struck down.

In June, the Department of Justice (DOJ) declined to defend the constitutionality of the individual mandate alongside the ACA’s provisions on guaranteed issue (42 U.S.C. §§ 300gg-1, 300gg-4(a)), community rating (42 U.S.C. §§ 300gg(a)(1), 300gg-4(b)), and the ban on preexisting condition exclusions and discrimination based on health status (42 U.S.C. § 300gg-3). These provisions collectively ensure that individuals with preexisting conditions cannot be charged more for their coverage or denied coverage or benefits based on health status or other factors.

The plaintiffs have asked Judge Reed O’Connor of the federal district court in the Northern District of Texas to enjoin HHS and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from enforcing the ACA and its implementing regulations—or, at a minimum, to strike down the law’s guaranteed issue and community rating provisions alongside the mandate. Judge O’Connor is considering ruling on the merits of the case (instead of issuing a preliminary injunction) and has scheduled a hearing on the motion for a preliminary injunction for September 5.

As noted above, the hearing will coincide with confirmation hearings for Judge Kavanaugh. Texas will likely be a focal point in the Kavanaugh proceedings because of the possibility that the case will reach the Supreme Court and because previous decisions suggest that Judge Kavanaugh believes that a President can decline to enforce laws that he or she believes to be unconstitutional.

The New Republican Legislation

Recognizing the potential impact of the Texas lawsuit, 10 Republican Senators released new legislation on August 23. The bill is sponsored by Senators Thom Tillis (NC), Lamar Alexander (TN), Chuck Grassley (IA), Dean Heller (NV), Bill Cassidy (LA), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Joni Ernst (IA), Lindsey Graham (SC), John Barrasso (WY), and Roger Wicker (MS). It is tied directly to the Texas litigation: Press releases acknowledge the September 5 hearing and state that “protections for patients with pre-existing conditions could be eliminated” if Judge O’Connor rules in favor of the plaintiffs.

The legislation would amend the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Although HIPAA offered significant new protections at the time it was passed, these protections were limited in terms of ensuring that people with preexisting conditions could access affordable, comprehensive coverage, particularly in the individual market. HIPAA established a minimum set of federal protections for certain consumers—for example, those who lost their group coverage—facing certain situations, such as job lock because of a new preexisting condition exclusion period. HIPAA also required guaranteed issue in the small group market and guaranteed renewability in the individual and group markets.

As mentioned, the DOJ has declined to defend the ACA’s provisions on guaranteed issue (42 U.S.C. §§ 300gg-1, 300gg-4(a)) and community rating (42 U.S.C. §§ 300gg(a)(1), 300gg-4(b)), and the ban on preexisting condition exclusions and discrimination based on health status (42 U.S.C. § 300gg-3). Thus, their position in the lawsuit implicates parts of four provisions of federal law: 42 U.S.C. §§ 300gg, 300gg-1, 300gg-3, and 300gg-4.

The legislation introduced by Republican Senators would restore only two of the four provisions that stand to be invalidated in Texas: 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-1 (guaranteed issue) and most of § 300gg-4 (guaranteed issue and rating based on health status). So the bill would prohibit the denial of coverage and rating based on health status, but it would not prohibit preexisting condition exclusions or rating based on other factors, such as age, gender, tobacco use, or occupation. This means that many individuals, including those with preexisting conditions, could still face higher premiums, higher out-of-pocket costs, and the denial of benefits because of a preexisting condition even after paying premiums for many months.

Implications 

The protections offered by the restoration of the two provisions included in the Senate GOP bill, § 300gg-1 and most of § 300gg-4, are largely illusory without the other parts of the ACA—community rating and the ban on preexisting condition exclusions—that are at risk in the lawsuit. Assuming the at-risk provisions are struck down and the new legislation is adopted, consumers would still face significant gaps. For instance, a woman with a history of cancer could purchase a policy under the new bill, but she could be charged more based on her gender and age, potentially pricing her out of the market. In addition, her policy could have a preexisting condition exclusion, meaning that any recurrence of cancer—or any other health condition—might not be covered at all; this could lead to much higher out-of-pocket costs and far less financial protection.

If Congress were to enact this bill today, it would largely be duplicative of existing law (and would do nothing to disturb the ACA). If Congress were to enact this bill in response to the Texas litigation, its effect would depend on how (if at all) a court would invalidate the ACA provisions in Texas. Would a court strike the entire provisions, including what was adopted under HIPAA and other federal laws? Or would a court simply strike the amendments that were made by the ACA?

If the latter, the new legislation might do even less than its authors think, because much of the bill is, in fact, devoted to readopting existing federal law that may not be at issue in Texas. These provisions were adopted before the ACA and touch on, for instance, genetic information nondiscrimination and long-standing exceptions to guaranteed issue.

No Vote On Manchin Resolution To Potentially Intervene In Texas

In July, Democratic Senators led by Joe Manchin (WV) introduced a resolution with the goal of intervening in Texas to defend the ACA’s protections for people with preexisting conditions. The resolution would authorize the Senate Legal Counsel to move to intervene in the case on behalf of the Senate and defend the ACA. During last week’s debate over an HHS appropriations bill, Senate leadership blocked a vote on the amendment.

 

 

The uninsured rate remains plateaued

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https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/Insur201808.pdf?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosvitals&stream=top-stories

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is out with its latest health insurance coverage data this morning, and the nation’s uninsured rate isn’t really changing a whole lot.

By the numbers: As of March 2018, 8.8% of all Americans, or about 28.3 million people, had no health insurance.

  • Those numbers are almost identical to the CDC’s 2017 report, when 28.1 million people were uninsured as of March 2017.
  • It’s also worth noting that 47% of people younger than 65 are in a high-deductible plan, up from 42.3% recorded at the same point last year.

The big picture: The federal and state exchanges established by the ACA are treading water when it comes to enrollment, and no new states have expanded Medicaid. (Notably, Maine Gov. Paul LePage is still resisting his state’s voter-approved Medicaid expansion.)

The bottom line: Don’t expect the uninsured rate to fluctuate a lot until more states expand Medicaid or the ACA exchanges get more federal support.

Looking ahead: The U.S. Census Bureau will unveil its 2017 health insurance numbers on Sept. 12.

 

 

Priced Out of Health Insurance, Americans Rig Their Own Safety Nets

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-22/priced-out-of-health-insurance-americans-rig-their-own-safety-nets

Risking It: Stories From America's Uninsured

Consumers frustrated by high costs are bypassing the bureaucracy with patchwork plans.

When their son Sky was born four years ago, Lindsie and Chris Bergevin were hit with a big surprise: $7,000 in bills for the birth that their health plan didn’t cover. Sky was two when the couple jettisoned their medical insurance, which helped them eventually pay off the debt.

Now that they’re ready to have a second child, they’re not going back to their old coverage, with its premiums of more than $350 a month. Instead, they’ve patched together an alternative through a religious group and a primary-care doctor whom they can visit anytime for a monthly fee.

“I was so jaded with the whole health-care insurance situation,” Lindsie, 35, says. “I just didn’t want to deal with it.”

The Bergevins, who rent a snug little house near downtown Boise, Idaho, are joining a small but growing number of Americans rigging their own medical safety nets. They’re frustrated by the high costs, opaque pricing, and maddening bureaucracy of health insurance.

In their quest for a different way, they’re meeting doctors like Julie Gunther who are also fed up. These physicians have opted to reject insurance, instead charging patients directly in return for more personalized care.

“I like to think we can protect people in vulnerable moments where they’re going to get lost like a widget,” Gunther said, “because they’re not a widget for us.”
We Want to Hear Your Insurance Story:

Bloomberg News wants to hear about being uninsured in America in 2018 and what it means to you.
Please click here to tell us your story.

Bloomberg News is following people who are uninsured in a year-long effort to tell the story of Americans struggling to afford the rising costs of health care, and the financial and medical trade-offs they make.

No reliable data exist on how many people are replacing insurance with arrangements like the Bergevins’, but the trend appears to be gaining momentum.
The number of people joining so-called health-care sharing ministries—religion-based cost-sharing plans—rose 74 percent from 2014 to 2016, according to the latest Internal Revenue Service data. An alliance for the groups said that more than 1 million people now participate in such programs. Similarly, primary-care clinics like the one Julie Gunther started in 2014 have grown to almost 900 from just a handful in the early 2000s, according to the Direct Primary Care Coalition, a trade group for the clinics.

The number of people without traditional insurance is expected to increase. The Trump Administration lifted the Affordable Care Act’s penalty for those who go without insurance, while also encouraging the growth of lightly regulated products such as short-term health plans. Proponents of Obamacare fear the administration’s actions will draw healthy people out of the ACA marketplaces, raising costs for those who remain.

Though the ACA expanded coverage to 19 million Americans, some of those gains are reversing. About 28 million remain uninsured. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-research nonprofit, determined that most uninsured families simply found health insurance too expensive.

The Bergevins are one of those families.
Lindsie is a freelance graphic designer who focuses on clients in the craft industry. Chris, 34, is a supervisor at the auto shop the Bergevins jointly own with another couple. Though the business is growing, things were tight enough that Chris didn’t draw a salary until last summer. Last year, the couple took home from $40,000 to $50,000, after taxes.

In 2014, when Lindsie was pregnant with Sky, the couple still had coverage through her job at the Idaho Statesman newspaper.
A calculator on her Aetna health plan’s website estimated the Bergevins would need to pay about $3,000 or $4,000 out-of-pocket for Sky’s birth. When the total bill came, the sum for prenatal care, hospital costs, anesthesia, and other care was triple the estimate.

They were still paying off Sky’s birth in 2016 when Lindsie had surgery to remove her tonsils and correct a deviated septum, leaving them with several thousands of dollars more in bills.

She put the sum on a CareCredit medical credit card and is paying $300 each month toward that debt.
As the couple thought more about it, maintaining their coverage made little sense. They were falling deeper into medical debt, despite having insurance which itself cost thousands of dollars a year. In 2016, Lindsie left her newspaper job to devote herself full-time to her thriving freelance design business—and they went uninsured.

“I couldn’t justify it,” she says. The cheapest policy she could find through the Affordable Care Act, she recalls, was $547 a month—more than half the family’s $875 monthly rent at the time. It had a high deductible that could leave them with out-of-pocket costs of more than $10,000.

“If something were to happen to us, we would have been in trouble,” she acknowledges. To hedge, the couple bought an inexpensive accident policy from Aflac that would cover some costs from an injury if, for example, Chris hurt himself working.

A friend told them about a small primary-care clinic called SparkMD less than a mile from their house. The doctors didn’t accept insurance. Instead, they charged a monthly fee of $130 per family. That allowed visits as needed without any limits. When Lindsie went to check it out, a physician began with an in-depth conversation about the family’s health.

“It was amazing. She sat down with me for an hour and talked about everything,” Lindsie says.

Gunther, the Bergevins’ new physician, had long wanted to be a family doctor in her hometown. Working for a large hospital system, though, she was soon chafing under a bureaucracy that seemed to make too many of her clinical decisions for her, down to what tools and equipment she could use. Even worse, Gunther was paid based on her volume of patients and services billed.

She saw patients in 15-minute intervals and says she felt like a factory line worker. She’d later joke that she spent longer waiting in line for her morning coffee than she did with a patient.

“I was saying ‘I’m sorry’ all the time,” Gunther, 42, recalls. “I’m sorry I’m late, I’m sorry this didn’t get called in, I’m sorry this got forgotten, I’m sorry they didn’t give me the message.”

Burned out, she quit her job in 2014 and started her own practice. She borrowed about $200,000 to renovate an old red-brick law office on a leafy corner of downtown Boise, a few blocks from one of the city’s big hospital campuses.

Along with a nurse practitioner and a small office staff, she cares for about 600 patients. A typical primary-care doctor carries at least double or triple that load. More than half of Gunther’s patients have health insurance, often in high-deductible plans. Others are small business owners like the Bergevins. Most are disenchanted with the health-care system.

Last year, Lindsie Bergevin had a bad fever and what she described as “the worst pain I think I ever had in my head.” She called Gunther at 9:30 p.m. on a Saturday. Gunther met her at the clinic 15 minutes later. “She’s like, ‘Girl, you have a double ear infection, and the worst I’ve ever seen.’”

Bergevin walked out with an antibiotic and says that if Gunther hadn’t seen her, she would’ve gone to the emergency room, which could have resulted in a bill for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Gunther tells her patients that belonging to her practice is not a replacement for having health insurance.

“There’s a whole bunch of things I can’t take care of,” Gunther says. “If you’re not standing upright, or bleeding doesn’t stop, do not call me.”

In April, knowing that they wanted to conceive this year, the Bergevins paid to join a Christian nonprofit called Liberty HealthShare. Organizations like Liberty, sometimes called faith-based plans, help like-minded members share some medical costs. To join, members must pledge to adhere to Christian principles. They are required to make fixed payments each month, and the money is disbursed to cover health-care needs for other families.

Though health-sharing ministries function like insurance in some ways, they aren’t regulated by states, don’t have capital requirements to protect against large losses and don’t have to adhere to rules about minimum benefits. They decline to cover medical expenses that result from behavior they deem immoral. They won’t pay medical costs for a drunk driver in a car crash, for example, or for contraception.

There are other restrictions too: Liberty limits coverage of pre-existing conditions for up to three years, according to its guidelines. Members can also get bounced for “failure to fully disclose known or suspected pre-existing condition information” when they join. Those limits are part of the reason why they’re cheaper—and potentially riskier.

The Bergevins originally expected to pay $450 per month for Liberty. Because Lindsie is overweight, they pay a surcharge of $80 per month—a fee regulated insurers are barred from charging. When they joined, their plan had an “annual unshared amount”—the equivalent of a deductible—of $1,500. Two months later, they learned that amount would increase to $2,250. Lindsie wasn’t thrilled, but she calls it “a ton cheaper than a typical deductible.” And on the plus side, Liberty would reimburse them for some of the cost of membership in SparkMD.

In early June, Lindsie sat at her kitchen table with a stack of medical bills going back four years. Sky ran in from the living room, where Dr. Seuss cartoons played on the TV, looking for dessert before he  finished his dinner.

The Bergevins’ improvised plan has pros and cons. They didn’t have to pay premiums for almost two years while they were uninsured, easing their finances significantly while their businesses grew. They love the personalized care they get from Gunther. And their costs for having another child should be capped at a lower level under the Liberty plan.

But between Liberty and SparkMD, the Bergevins pay more than they did for health coverage through Lindsie’s old job, and, she estimates, about as much as Obamacare insurance would cost. The family is still exposed to considerable risk. Liberty caps reimbursements at $1 million—a limit that insurance companies can’t impose. They have two friends who have had cancer, and, Chris says, “a million’s definitely not enough.”

The Bergevins have their fingers crossed that their choices will allow them to expand their family without incurring the kind of debt that Sky’s birth and Lindsie’s surgery left them with. But they know their improvised approach isn’t for everyone.

“It’s not like I’m trying to say, just go without insurance,” Lindsie says. “You have to find something that’s going to work for you.”

It’s not just the uninsured — it’s also the cost of health care

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https://www.axios.com/not-just-uninsured-cost-of-health-care-cdcb4c02-0864-4e64-b745-efbe5b4b7efc.html

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We still have an uninsured problem in the U.S., but we have a far broader health care affordability problem that hits sick people especially hard.

Why it matters: It’s time to think more broadly about who’s having trouble paying for the health care they need. The combination of lack of insurance and affordability affects about a quarter of the non-elderly population at any one time, but almost half of people who are sick.

 

Now that the Affordable Care Act has expanded health coverage, the percentage of the non-elderly population that is uninsured is now just under 11%, the lowest level ever recorded. But as the chart shows:

  • Another 15.5% who have insurance either skipped or delayed care because of the cost or reported that they or someone in their family faced problems paying their bills in 2017.
  • That brings the total percentage of non-elderly people with insurance and affordability problems to 26.2%.

 

More striking: nearly half of all people in fair or poor health — 46.4% — are uninsured or have affordability problems despite having coverage.

  • That includes 13.5% who were uninsured and in fair or poor health — arguably the worst off in the entire system — and another 32.9% percent who have insurance but said they or a family member have had a problem affording care in the last year.

 

It’s not surprising that people who are sicker and need more care would have more problems paying for it. But arguably an insurance system should work best for people who need it the most.

 

All this says a lot about current health care politics.

  • It helps explain why so many people name health their top issue, despite the progress that has been made in covering the uninsured. And everyone who’s sick and can’t afford medical care has family members and friends who see what they are going through, creating a political multiplier effect.
  • It is also why health care is substantially an economic issue as well as an issue of access to care. When people have trouble paying medical bills, it’s a hard hit to their family budgets — causing many people to take a second job, roll up more debt, borrow money, and forego other important family needs.

 

For as long as I have been in the field, we have used two measures more than any others to gauge the performance of the health system: the number of Americans who are uninsured and the percentage of GDP we spend on health. Both measures remain valid today.

The bottom line: If we want a measure that captures how people perceive the system when the number of uninsured is down and overall health spending has moderated, we need better ways of counting up the much larger share of the population who are having problems affording care.

And whatever big policy idea candidates are selling, from single payer on the left to health care choices on the right, the candidate who connects that idea to the public’s worries about paying their medical bills is the one who will have found the secret sauce.

 

 

Healthcare Is The No. 1 Issue For Voters; A New Poll Reveals Which Healthcare Issue Matters Most

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2018/08/13/midterms/#5b6ac3453667

Depending on which news outlet, politician or pundit you ask, American voters will soon participate in the most important midterm election “in many years,” “in our lifetime” or even “in our country’s history.”

The stakes of the November 2018 elections are high for many reasons, but no issue is more important to voters than healthcare. In fact, NBC News and The Wall Street Journal found that healthcare was the No. 1 issue in a poll of potential voters.

What’s curious about that survey, however, is that the pollsters didn’t ask the next, most-logical question.

What Healthcare Issue, Specifically, Matters Most To Voters?

To answer this question, I surveyed readers of my monthly newsletter. Will the opioid crisis sway voters at the polls? What about abortion rights? The price of drugs? The cost of insurance?

To understand the significance of these results, look closely at the top four:

  1. Prescription drug pricing (58%)
  2. Universal/single-payer coverage (57%)
  3. Medicare funding (50%)
  4. Medicaid funding (40%)

Notice a pattern here? All of these healthcare issues come down to one thing: money.

Healthcare Affordability: The New American Anxiety

Because the majority of my newsletter readers operate in the field of healthcare, they’re well informed about the industry’s macroeconomics. They understand healthcare consumes 18% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and that national healthcare spending now exceeds $3.4 trillion annually. The readers also know that Americans aren’t getting what they pay for. The United States has the lowest life expectancy and highest childhood mortality rate among the 11 wealthiest nations, according to the Commonwealth Fund Report. But these macroeconomic issues and global metrics are not what keeps healthcare professionals or their patients up at night.

Eight in 10 Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Most don’t have the savings to cover out-of-pocket expenses should they experience a serious or prolonged illness. In fact, half of U.S. adults say that one large medical bill would force them to borrow money. The reality is that a cancer diagnosis or an expensive, lifelong prescription could spell financial disaster for the majority of Americans. Today, 62% of bankruptcy filings are due to medical bills.

To understand how we’ve arrived at this healthcare affordability crisis, we need to examine the evolution of healthcare financing and accountability over the past decade.

The Recent History Of Healthcare’s Money Problems

Until the 21st century, the only Americans who worried about whether they could afford medical care were classified as poor or uninsured. Today, the middle class and insured are worried, too.

How we got here is a story of evolving policies, poor financial planning and, ultimately, buck passing.

A big part of the problem was the rate of healthcare cost inflation, which has averaged nearly twice the annual rate of GDP growth. But there are other contributing factors, as well.

Take the evolution of Medicare, for example, the federal insurance program for seniors. For most of the program’s history, the government reimbursed doctors and hospitals at (approximately) the same rate as commercial insurers. That started to change after a series of federal budget cuts (1997, 2011) and sequestration (2013) reduced provider payments. Today, Medicare reimburses only 90% of the costs its enrollees incur and commercial insurers are forced to make up the difference. As a result, businesses see their premiums rise each year, not only to offset the growth in their employee’s medical expenses, but also to compensate hospitals and physicians for the unreimbursed portion of the cost of caring for Medicare patients.

Combine two high-cost factors: general health care inflation and price constraints imposed by Medicare and what you get are insurance premiums rising much faster than business revenues.

To compensate, companies are shifting much of the added expense to their employees. The most effective way to do so: Raise deductibles. By increasing the maximum deductible annually, the company reduces the magnitude of its expenses the following year, at least until that limit is reached. A decade ago, only 5% of workers were enrolled in a high-deductible health plan. That number soared to 39.4% by 2016, and jumped again to 43.2% the following year.

High-deductible coverage holds individual patients and their families responsible for a major portion of annual healthcare costs, anywhere from $1,350 to $6,650 per person or $2,700 to $13,3000 per family. This exceeds what the average available savings for most American families and helps to explain the growing financial angst in this country.

And it’s not just employees under the age of 65 who are anxious. Medicare enrollees also fear that the cost of care will drain their savings. As drug prices continue to soar, Medicare enrollees are hitting what has been labeled “the donut hole,” which means that once the cost of their “Part D” prescriptions reaches a certain threshold, patients are on the hook for a significant part of the cost. Now, more and more seniors find themselves having to pay thousands of dollars a year for essential medications.

When it comes to paying for healthcare, the United States is an anxious nation in search of relief. The fear of not being able to afford out-of-pocket requirements is the reason so many voters have made healthcare their No. 1 priority as they head to the polls this November. And it’s why both parties are scrambling to deliver the right campaign message.

On Healthcare, Each Party Is A House Divided

In the last presidential election, the Democratic Party chose a traditional candidate, Hilary Clinton, whose views on healthcare were closer to the center than her leading challenger, Bernie Sanders. Two years later, the party is divided by those who believe that (a) the only way to regain control of Congress is by fronting centrist candidates who support and want to strengthen the Affordable Care Act as the best way to attract undecided and independent voters, and (b) those who will accept nothing less than a government-run single payer system: Medicare for all. The primary election of New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Sanders supporter, over long-time incumbent Joseph Crowley, represents this growing rift within the party.

The Republicans also face two competing ideologies on healthcare. Since his election in 2016, President Donald Trump has sought to dismantle the ACA. In addition, he and his political allies want to shift control of Medicaid (the insurance program for low-income Americans) from the federal government to the states—a move that would lower healthcare spending while eroding coverage protection. There are others in the Republican Party who worry that shrinking Medicaid or undermining the health exchanges will come back to bite them. Most of them live and campaign in states where voters support the ACA.

Do The Parties Agree On Anything?

Regardless of party, everyone, from the president to the most fervent single-payer advocate, understands that voters are angry about the cost of their medications and the associated out-of-pocket expenses. And, not surprisingly, each party blames the other for our current situation. Last week, the president gave the Medicare program greater ability to reign in costs for medications administered in a physician’s office. In addition, Trump has promised a major announcement this week to achieve other reductions in drug costs. Of course, generous campaign contributions may dim the enthusiasm either party has for change once the voting is over.

Playing “What If” With Healthcare’s Future

If both chambers remain Republican controlled, we can expect further erosion of the ACA with more exceptions to coverage mandates and progressively less enforcement of its provisions. For Republicans, a loss of either the Senate (a long-shot) or the House (more likely), would slow this process.

But regardless of what happens in the midterms, no one should expect Congress to solve healthcare’s cost challenge soon. Instead, patient anxiety will continue to escalate for three reasons.

First, none of the espoused legislative options will do much to address the inefficiencies in the current delivery system. Therefore, prices will continue to rise and businesses will have little choice but to shift more of the cost on to their workers.

Second, the Fed will persist in limiting Medicare reimbursement to doctors and hospitals, further aggravating the economic problems of American businesses. whose premium rates will rise faster than overall healthcare inflation.

Finally, compromise will prove even more elusive since so many leading candidates represent the extremes of the political spectrum.

Politics, the economy and healthcare will all be deeply entangled this November and for years to come. I believe the safest path, relative to improving the nation’s health, is toward the center. Amending the more problematic parts of the ACA is better than either of the two extreme positions. If our nation progressively undermines the current coverage provisions, millions of Americans will see their access to care erode. And on the other end, a Medicare-for-all healthcare system will produce large increases in utilization and cost.

It’s anyone’s guess what will happen in three months. But, whatever the outcome, I can guarantee that two years from now healthcare will remain top-of-mind for voters.

 

 

Short-term health plans: A junk solution to a real problem

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https://theconversation.com/short-term-health-plans-a-junk-solution-to-a-real-problem-101447

Serious illnesses like cancer often are not covered by short-term health insurance policies.

 

After failing to overturn most of the Affordable Care Act in a very public fight, President Donald Trump has been steadily working behind the scenes to further destabilize former President Barack Obama’s signature achievement. A major component in this effort has been an activity called rule-making, the administrative implementation of statutes by federal agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services.

Most recently, citing excessive consumer costs, the Trump administration issued regulations to vastly expand the availability of short-term, limited duration insurance plans.

While the cost of health care is one of the overwhelming problems in the American health care system, short-term health plans do nothing to alter the underlying causes. Indeed, these plans may cause great harm to individual consumers while simultaneously threatening the viability of many states’ insurance markets. Having studied the U.S. health care market for years, here is why I think states can and should take quick action to protect consumers.

Comparing crab apples and oranges

Short-term, limited duration insurance plans, by definition, provide insurance coverage for a short, limited period. Since being regulated by the Health Insurance Portability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), this has meant for less than one year. Sold at least since the 1970s, they were offered as an alternative to major medical insurance intended for individuals with temporary and transitional insurance needs such as recent college graduates or those in between jobs.

However, after passage of the Affordable Care Act further concerns emerged over the misuse and mismarketing of these kinds of plans. As a result, the Obama administration restricted their duration to three months.

In addition to being shorter in duration, these policies’ benefits tend to also be much skimpier than for those plans sold on the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces. For example, plans often do not cover crucial services such as prescription drugs, maternity care, or major emergencies like cancer. Equally problematic, even those benefits covered come with high deductibles, strict limitations, and annual and lifetime coverage limits.

It is important to note that short-term health plans are also not subject to any of the consumer protections established by the Affordable Care Act. This means, for example, that insurers can set premiums, or even refuse to sell to an individual, based on a person’s medical history. Moreover, consumers must update their health status every time they seek to purchase coverage.

Crucially, short-term health plans have shown to be particularly discriminatory against women. For one, women are charged higher premiums. Moreover, they are likely to be disproportionately affected by medical underwriting for pre-existing conditions like domestic and sexual abuse and pre- and postnatal treatment.

Because plans are so limited in benefits, and because insurers are able to deny coverage to sicker individuals, short-term health plans come with much lower premiums than standard insurance plans with their more expansive benefits and vastly superior consumer protections. Indeed on average, premiums amount to only one-fourth of ACA-compliant plans.

Too good to be true

While short-term insurance plans are more affordable in terms of premiums, they come with a slew of problems for consumers.

For one, consumers have a tremendously hard time understanding the American health care system and health insurance. Predatory insurance companies have been known to take advantage of this shortcoming by camouflaging covered benefits, something the Affordable Care Act sought to ameliorate. Mis- and underinformed consumers often find themselves surprised when they actually try to use their insurance.

Even for those who are aware of the limitations, problems may arise. Unable to predict major medical emergencies, consumers may be confronted with tens of thousands of dollars of medical bills if they fall sick or face injury.

Moreover, insurers are also able to rescind policies after major medical expenses have been incurred if consumers failed to fully disclose any underlying health conditions. This even applies to health conditions that consumers had not been aware of prior to getting sick.

While some may argue that this is the fault of the those who purchase short-term insurance, it causes problems for all of us.

For one, these individuals may refuse to seek care. This could result in severe consequence for their and their family’s well-being and ability to earn a living.

At the same time, medical providers will shift the costs of the resulting bad debts to other individuals with insurance or the general taxpayer.

Bad for the individual, worse for all of us

Short-term insurance plans are perhaps even more problematic for the health of the overall insurance market than they are for individual consumers.

With a very short implementation time frame, insurance regulators in the states only have until October to prepare for the potentially significant disruptions to their markets. This leaves little time for analysis and regulatory preparation.

Yet long-term consequences are even more concerning. Healthier and younger consumers are naturally drawn to the low premiums offered by these plans. At the same time, older and sicker individuals will value the comprehensive benefits and protections offered by the Affordable Care Act. The result is the continuing segregation of insurance markets and risk pools into a cheaper, healthier one and a sicker, more expensive one. As premiums rise in the latter, its healthiest individuals will begin to drop their coverage, leading to ever more premium increases and larger coverage losses. If left unchecked, eventually the entire insurance market may collapse in this process.

This could be particularly problematic in states with relatively small insurance markets like Wyoming or West Virginia where even one truly sick individual can drive up premiums tremendously.

States have options

The expansion of short-term health plans is one action by the Trump administration that states can counteract relatively simply. Currently, states serve as the primary regulator of their insurance markets. As such, they have the power to make decisions about what insurance products can be sold within their boundaries.

Action can be taken by insurance regulators and legislature to create relatively simple solutions. While the vast majority of states have failed to create consumer and market protections, a small number of states have done just that.

New York, for example, has banned the sale of these plans.

Others, like Maryland, have strictly limited their sale and renewability.

Treating the symptoms, not the cause

Many Americans struggle to access insurance and services despite the Affordable Care Act. While the Affordable Care Act has unquestionably improved access to insurance for Americans, cost control and affordability are truly its Achilles heels. Indeed, some Americans lost their limited benefits, lower cost plans when the Affordable Care Act did not recognize them as viable coverage.

The Trump administration has rightfully highlighted to high costs of the American health care system. However, offering consumers the opportunity to purchase bare-bones insurance at lower costs does nothing to solve America’s health care cost problems.

If access to insurance is truly a concern for the Trump administration, I believe it should seek to convince the remaining hold-outs to expand their Medicaid programs. Also, I think discontinuing its actions to destabilize insurance markets would also go a long way to reducing premiums.

Yet when it comes to altering the underlying cost calculus, there are no simple solutions. Administrative costs are too high. Medical quality is too low. Resources constantly get wasted. Consumers could do more to be healthier.

Ultimately, I see it coming down to one crucial problem: Providers, pharmaceutical companies, device makers and insurers are making too much money. And it is these vested interests that make structural reform of the U.S. health care system a truly herculean endeavor.

But unless Americans and policymakers of both parties are willing to address this root cause, any reform effort amounts to nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

Surprise hospitals bills are everywhere

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An analysis of out-of-network claims in large employer health plans

Surprise hospital bills are remarkably common, my colleague Caitlin Owens reports. A new Kaiser Family Foundation brief finds that, among people with employer-based coverage, almost 1 in 5 patients admitted to the hospital end up getting a bill from an out-of-network provider.

Why it matters: Patients have to pay more out of their own pockets for out-of-network care.

  • As a lot of excellent recent reporting on emergency room billing has shown, it can be almost impossible to avoid out-of-network bills even when you take pains to ensure you’re going to an in-network hospital.

Balance billing — the practice of providers billing patients for the difference between their charges and insurance payments — is often responsible for these situations.

  • The Affordable Care Act required private plans to limit annual cost-sharing, but these generally only apply to in-network service charges.
  • Patients with emergency room claims and psychological/substance abuse claims are more at risk of receiving an out-of-network provider claim, per Kaiser.

By the numbers:

  • For inpatient admissions, those who use in-network facilities still receive a claim from an out-of-network provider 15.4% of the time.

 

 

2018 Mid-Term Healthcare Issues

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2018/08/15/the-health-202-senate-democrats-stay-focused-on-health-care-even-during-short-august-recess/5b72f0901b326b4f9e90a72c/?utm_term=.2403975557c2

Senate Democrats used their truncated August recess to talk to their constituents about one key issue: Health care. 

And though they are returning to Washington tonight, they have no plans to stop talking about it. 

That’s a remarkable turnaround for Democrats who have been on the defensive about health care for the better part of a decade. Obamacare played a major role in their loss of control of the House in the first midterm election of President Obama’s presidency in 2010. But now, they’re hoping to take back the House and retain their seats in the Senate largely by running on the merits of the Affordable Care Act.

Over their 10-day mini break, Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) held a roundtable discussion with voters about health care, as did Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who held his third roundtable this year focused specifically on pre-existing conditions. And Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) also met with voters with pre-existing conditions on Tuesday.

“Cutting people off from insurance and making it harder for people to get insurance, we’re all still gonna pay the bill because in America we’re not going to stop people at the door at the emergency room and I’m sorry you don’t have health insurance, we’re gonna let you die,” she said, according to Missourinet.

In Nevada, Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen, who is hoping to unseat GOP Sen. Dean Heller, also held a public meeting with voters with pre-existing conditions.  Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) met with health care providers and patients to talk pre-existing conditions, and Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who is vying for the open Senate seat there, also met with constituent groups to discuss health care.

“It doesn’t matter which community you are in, health care is the number-one issue that Arizonans are talking about,” Sinema told the Arizona Daily Star. “It is not just Arizonans who don’t have health-care coverage, many of those who are expressing concerns and fear are Arizonans who do have coverage but cannot afford it.”

As campaign cycles go, it’s still early in this one. And the deluge of ads will really heat up come fall. Republicans still see an opening to talk about rising costs of health care and President Trump continues to declare that the ACA is dead. But unlike years past when the GOP could run on an anti-Obamacare message, this year the party is more likely to focus on other issues like tax cuts and job creation. 

It’s harder for GOP candidates to make their case that health care policy is failing in the first election where they are in control of both houses in Congress and the White House. And recent scuttlebutt that Republicans would consider another repeal effort if they held Congress may not be helpful this cycle.

And so Democrats, if August activity is the precursor to the fall campaign, are going all in on health care. 

Earlier this month, the New York Times’ Margot Sanger-Katz had a great anecdote from an event with McCaskill. The senator, who may be in the toughest fight of her career, asked voters to stand if they have a pre-existing condition. There were reportedly few people left in their seats.

The Democrats and the groups who support them have homed in specifically on the warning that if the ACA is struck down, people with pre-existing conditions would lose protection. Notably, McCaskill and Manchin, two of the Democrats’ most vulnerable members, are running against state attorneys general who joined a lawsuit arguing the ACA should be deemed unconstitutional. If the law were struck down, it would take with it protections for people with past and current health conditions.

Before the Senate left, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.)  pledged to keep health care front and center this month in Congress, which is in keeping with Democrats’ election strategy this year.  Schumer’s office declined to show its hand, but on the floor he detailed exactly what the Democrats would be pushing for, including votes to protect people with pre-existing conditions and a Medicare buy-in program. They’re unlikely to get those votes, but that’s all part of the game plan to keep the attention on health care.

“The number one thing Americans want is health care, and we Democrats will spend August recess focusing on that issue, and forcing Republicans to cast votes or deny votes on those important issues,” Schumer said. “It’s a great opportunity, not just for Democrats, not just for Republicans, but for America. We are going to do it.”

The first television ad the campaign arm for the Democrats released in 2017 was about health care. It showed a man selling his car and a woman pawning her engagement ring. Then it cuts to them sitting at the hospital bedside of a sick child.

Most of the heavy ad buys are still to come, but an independent analysis of political ads so far this cycle found pro-Democrat ads have been overwhelmingly about health care.  According to Kantar Media/CMAG data by the Wesleyan Media Project, “An astounding 63 percent of pro-Democratic ads for U.S. House discuss healthcare, and 16 percent contain an explicit statement about being in favor of the Affordable Care Act. U.S. Senate contests are less likely to feature health care, but it is still the top issue, appearing in over a quarter (28 percent) of all ad airings.”

Take Rosen, the congresswoman running against Heller. She has a television ad that shows her talking to voters about their anxieties over the ACA being repealed. She says in the ad that ACA has “real problems,” but repealing it isn’t the answer. 

It’s a strategy divergent from previous years when Democrats were defensive of their support for Obamacare. They’d make macro arguments about the millions of people who would lose coverage without it. But now, with the focus on pre-existing conditions, they’ve found a way to make it personal and accessible for voters. 

“What we’re seeing on the trail is that health care remaining the defining issue of the election and voters are aware and concerned that GOP policies will increase their costs and jeopardize their coverage and voters are preparing to hold GOP candidates accountable on this issue,” said David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

When asked, most Republicans will say they support keeping protections for pre-existing conditions. For example, when asked, McCaskill’s opponent, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, said he thinks“insurance companies should be forced to cover pre-existing conditions.”

For his part, Hawley’s first television ad of the campaign was about his work as a clerk on the Supreme Court and accused McCaskill of supporting “liberal activist judges.”

In a press release in response to the ad, McCaskill’s campaign said, “Josh Hawley is suing to strip protections for nearly 2.5 million Missourians with pre-existing conditions.”