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MID-TERM MESSAGE: DON’T MESS WITH MY HEALTHCARE!

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Tired of the partisanship and dithering in Congress, voters took matters into their own hands Tuesday and largely embraced initiatives and politicians who vowed to expand Medicaid and protect coverage for pre-existing conditions.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

You can’t undo an entitlement.

‘Repeal and replace’ is dead. Drug pricing reforms a likely area of bipartisan consensus.

Democrats can push Medicare For All at their own peril.

For healthcare economist Gail Wilensky, the big message that voters sent to their elected officials during Tuesday’s mid-term elections was straightforward and simple.

“Don’t mess with my healthcare,” says Wilensky, a senior fellow at Project HOPE and a former MedPAC chair.

“It’s as clear as that. There were no subtleties involved here,” she says. “That includes protections for pre-existing conditions and added coverage under Medicaid.”

Consider what happened on Tuesday:

  • Overall, Democrats wrested control of the House from Republicans in an election where healthcare was seen as the single biggest issue. Democrats ceaselessly hammered Republicans with the claim that the GOP would eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions.
  • Ballot initiatives in three bright-red Republican states all passed with healthy margins. A similar ballot initiative in Montana failed, but observers blamed the failure on an unpopular $2-per-pack tax on cigarettes that would have paid for the expansion.
  • Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, a lead plaintiff in a Texas v. Azar, was ousted by Democrat Josh Kaul, who promised to withdraw Wisconsin from the suit.
  • Three-term Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker lost a re-election bid to Democrat Tony Evers, likely scuttling that state’s recent waiver approval for Medicaid work requirements. Evers also pledged to expand Medicaid.
  • Phil Weiser, Colorado’s Democratic Attorney General-elect, and a former Obama administration staffer, told Colorado Public Radio that one of his first actions would be to join the 17 Democratic attorneys general intervening to defend the ACA in Texas v. Azar.  

Wilensky says the mid-terms results reinforce one of the oldest truisms in politics: Once an entitlement is proffered, there’s no going back.

“There is no precedent that I’m aware of in American political history where a benefit can be taken away,” she says. “Once granted, it can be modified, it can be increased, it can be augmented in some way, but there’s no taking it away after it’s been in place.”

When Democrats took control of the House, Wilensky says, they drove a stake through the heart of the “repeal and replace” movement.

“Republicans couldn’t even get that done when they control both houses of Congress, she says. “It’s a non-issue, in part because a lot of Republicans support major provisions of the Affordable Care Act.”

With repealing the ACA off the table, Democrats and Republicans might find common ground on issues such as drug pricing.

“That’s clearly is the most obvious, in general, but the specifics of what you want to do become much more challenging,” Wilensky says. “Typically, Democrats want to use administered pricing the way that we use administer pricing in parts of Medicare. I don’t know how much Republican support there is for that.”

The two parties could reach some sort of bipartisan agreement on Medicare Part B drugs, Wilensky says, because it’s a smaller program and the drugs are generally much more expensive.

“Most members of Congress are not talking about messing around with Part D, the ambulatory prescription drug coverage,” Wilensky says. “So it really has to do either with the expensive infusion drugs that are administered in the physician’s office or maybe something about drug advertising. Even then, it’s going to be hard lift when you actually get down to the specifics.”

Besides, Wilensky says, it’s not the cost of drugs that’s at the heart of voter agitation.

“You have to unpack what they’re saying to figure out what they’re actually pushing for,” she says. “People couldn’t care less about drug prices. They only care about what it costs them. So when they talk about drug prices they mean, ‘I want to spend less for the drugs I want, and I don’t want any constraints about what I can order.’

More likely, she says, common ground could be found in arcane areas such as mandating greater transparency for pharmacy benefits managers, and changing PBMs’ rebate structure.

Wilensky warns that giddy Democrats should learn from the mistakes of Republicans in the mid-terms and not attempt to force a Medicare-For-All solution on a wary public.

“First of all, they’re going to have to define what it means,” she says. “But, you have to be very careful because historically there’s not been warm and fuzzy response to taking away people’s employer-sponsored insurance.”

“Again, historically, when candidates mess around with employer-sponsored insurance they have gotten themselves into trouble,” she says. “Most people would like to keep what they have, because keeping what you have is much safer than going with something as yet to be defined.”

“DON’T MESS WITH MY HEALTHCARE. IT’S AS CLEAR AS THAT. THERE WERE NO SUBTLETIES INVOLVED HERE,”

 

Pre-existing conditions: Does any GOP proposal match the ACA?

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From a routine visit to a critical exam, the stethoscope remains one of the most common physician tools. (Alex Proimos, via Flickr Creative Commons)

In race after race, Democrats have been pummeling Republicans on the most popular piece of Obamacare, protections for pre-existing conditions. No matter how sick someone might be, today’s law says insurance companies must cover them.

Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare have all aimed to retain the guarantee that past health would be no bar to new coverage.

Democrats aren’t buying it.

In campaign ads in Nevada, Indiana, Florida, North Dakota, and more, Democrats charged their opponents with either nixing guaranteed coverage outright or putting those with pre-existing conditions at risk. The claims might exaggerate, but they all have had a dose of truth.

Republican proposals are not as air tight as Obamacare.

We’ll walk you through why.

The current guarantee

In the old days, insurance companies had ways to avoid selling policies to people who were likely to cost more than insurers wanted to spend. They might deny them coverage outright, or exclude coverage for a known condition, or charge so much that insurance became unaffordable.

The Affordable Care Act boxes out the old insurance practices with a package of legal moves. First, it says point-blank that carriers “may not impose any preexisting condition exclusion.” It backs that up with another section that says they “may not establish rules for eligibility” based on health status, medical condition, claims experience or medical history.

Those two provisions apply to all plans. The third –– community rating –– targets insurance sold to individuals and small groups (about 7 percent of the total) and limits the factors that go into setting prices. In particular, while insurers can charge older people more, they can’t charge them more than three times what they charge a 21-year-old policy holder.

Wrapped around all that is a fourth measure that lists the essential health benefits that every plan, except grandfathered ones, must offer. A trip to the emergency room, surgery, maternity care and more all fall under this provision. This prevents insurers from discouraging people who might need expensive services by crafting plans that don’t offer them.

At rally after rally for Republicans, President Donald Trump has been telling voters “pre-existing conditions will always be taken care of by us.” At an event in Mississippi, he faulted Democrats, saying, “they have no plan,” which ignores that Democrats already voted for the Obamacare guarantees.

At different times last year, Trump voiced support for Republican bills to replace Obamacare. The White House said the House’s American Health Care Act “protects the most vulnerable Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions.” A fact sheet cited $120 billion for states to keep plans affordable, along with other facets in the bill.

But the protections in the GOP plans are not as strong as Obamacare. One independent analysis found that the bill left over 6 million people exposed to much higher premiums for at least one year. We’ll get to the congressional action next, but as things stand, the latest official move by the administration has been to agree that the guarantees in the Affordable Care Act should go. It said that in a Texas lawsuit tied to the individual mandate.

The individual mandate is the evil twin of guaranteed coverage. If companies were forced to cover everyone, the government would force everyone (with some exceptions) to have insurance, in order to balance out the sick with the healthy. In the 2017 tax cut law, Congress zeroed out the penalty for not having coverage. A few months later, a group of 20 states looked at that change and sued to overturn the entire law.

In particular, they argued that with a toothless mandate, the judge should terminate protections for pre-existing conditions.

The U.S. Justice Department agreed, writing in its filing “the individual mandate is not severable from the ACA’s guaranteed-issue and community-rating requirements.”

So, if the mandate goes, so does guaranteed-issue.

The judge has yet to rule.

Latest Republican plan has holes

In August, a group of 10 Republican senators introduced a bill with a title designed to neutralize criticism that Republicans don’t care about this issue. It’s called Ensuring Coverage for Patients with Pre-Existing Conditions. (A House Republican later introduced a similar bill.)

The legislation borrows words directly from the Affordable Care Act, saying insurers “may not establish rules for eligibility” based on health status, medical condition, claims experience or medical history.

But there’s an out.

The bill adds an option for companies to deny certain coverage if “it will not have the capacity to deliver services adequately.”

To Allison Hoffman, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, that’s a big loophole.

“Insurers could exclude someone’s preexisting conditions from coverage, even if they offered her a policy,” Hoffman said. “That fact alone sinks any claims that this law offers pre-existing condition protection.”

The limit here is that insurers must apply such a rule across the board to every employer and individual plan. They couldn’t cherry pick.

But the bill also gives companies broad leeway in setting premiums. While they can’t set rates based on health status, there’s no limit on how much premiums could vary based on other factors.

The Affordable Care Act had an outside limit of 3 to 1 based on age. That’s not in this bill. And Hoffman told us the flexibility doesn’t stop there.

“They could charge people in less healthy communities or occupations way more than others,” Hoffman said. “Just guaranteeing that everyone can get a policy has no meaning if the premiums are unaffordable for people more likely to need medical care.”

Rodney Whitlock, a health policy expert who worked for Republicans in Congress, told us those criticisms are valid.

“Insurers will use the rules available to them to take in more in premiums than they pay out in claims,” Whitlock said. “If you see a loophole and think insurers will use it, that’s probably true.”

Past Republican plans also had holes

Whitlock said more broadly that Republicans have struggled at every point to say they are providing the same level of protection as in the Affordable Care Act.

“And they are not,” Whitlock said. “It is 100 percent true that Republicans are not meeting the Affordable Care Act standard. And they are not trying to.”

The House American Health Care Act and the Senate Better Care Reconciliation Act allowed premiums to vary five fold, compared to the three fold limit in the Affordable Care Act. Both bills, and then later the Graham-Cassidy bill, included waivers or block grants that offered states wide latitude over rates.

Graham-Cassidy also gave states leeway to redefine the core benefits that every plan had to provide. Health law professor Wendy Netter Epstein at DePaul University said that could play out badly.

“It means that insurers could sell very bare-bones plans with low premiums that will be attractive to healthy people, and then the plans that provide the coverage that sicker people need will become very expensive,” Epstein said.

Insurance is always about sharing risk. Whether through premiums or taxes, healthy people cover the costs of taking care of sick people. Right now, Whitlock said, the political process is doing a poor job of resolving how that applies to the people most likely to need care.

“The Affordable Care Act set up a system where people without pre-existing conditions pay more to protect people who have them,” Whitlock said. “Somewhere between the Affordable Care Act standard and no protections at all is a legitimate debate about the right tradeoff. We are not engaged in that debate.”

 

 

The ACA Protects People with Preexisting Conditions; Proposed Replacements Would Not

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Patient with preexisting condition

The Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces open for enrollment today for the sixth time. But this year the marketplace health plans in many states will face some new competition from insurance products that don’t meet the law’s standards, including the ban on denying coverage or charging more based on a person’s preexisting health conditions.

New Trump administration regulations released earlier this year have undermined the coverage protections in the ACA by making it possible for insurers to renew often skimpy short-term health insurance for up to three years, and for small businesses to form associations that sell substandard health plans. One of the reasons insurers can charge low premiums for these plans is that they generally cover less that ACA-compliant plans and insurers can deny them to people with diabetes or a history of cancer, for example. Only healthy people get these plans. And the more healthy people who buy them, the more expensive coverage becomes for people with a history of illness who buy their own insurance and have incomes too high to qualify for marketplace subsidies. In guidance released last week, the administration will allow states to further encourage the sale of these plans by letting people use federal subsidies to buy them.

As a nation, it is important for us to focus our energy on ways to improve people’s health. We are experiencing an unprecedented decline in life expectancy which will ultimately affect our economic health and the ability of Americans to compete in a global workforce. One of the most basic things we can do is preserve the coverage protections for people with health problems that have been law for more than four years, rather than poke holes in them. Americans say they support this idea. Recent polls have found that majorities of Americans believe that people with health conditions should not be denied affordable health insurance and health care. As a result, House and Senate candidates of both parties are running on their support for protecting coverage for people with preexisting conditions. But some of those very candidates voted to repeal the ACA last year.

The ACA has dramatically improved the ability of people with preexisting conditions to buy coverage. In 2010, before the law passed, we conducted a survey that found 70 percent of people with health problems said it was very difficult or impossible to buy affordable coverage, and just 36 percent said they ended up purchasing a health plan. By 2016, the percentage of people who had trouble buying an affordable plan had dropped down to 42 percent — still high but much improved — and 60 percent ultimately bought a plan.

While the congressional ACA repeal bills failed last year, a Republican Congress could try again next year. And in the meantime, the law’s preexisting conditions protections and other provisions face another threat from a lawsuit brought by Republican governors and attorneys general in 20 states. The U.S Department of Justice has agreed with the plaintiff states in part, and refused to defend the law’s preexisting condition protections. The court decision is pending. Should the states win, an estimated 17 million people could become uninsured.

Some congressional candidates from these states and others are pointing to their support for Republican proposals, such as the “Ensuring Coverage for Patients with Pre-Existing Conditions Act,” as proof they support coverage for preexisting conditions. This bill would prevent insurers from refusing or varying premiums based on preexisting conditions. But, unlike the ACA, this bill would allow insurers to sell plans that entirely exclude coverage for care pertaining to the preexisting conditions themselves. The reality is that this bill would not protect sick Americans, or those who may become ill in the future, from high out-of-pocket health care costs.

Several million people will be going to the marketplaces in the next few weeks to sign up for coverage since they do not have it through an employer. At this time, not one of them who buys a plan in the marketplace has to fear that an insurance company will deny them coverage or charge them a higher premium because of their health. The efforts to undermine the individual market and invalidate the ACA’s consumer protections are real-life threats for people who depend on this insurance for their health care. The nation cannot move forward with tackling our most pressing health care problems if we continue to debate a core protection of the ACA that most Americans support.

 

 

IN SEARCH OF INSURANCE SAVINGS, CONSUMERS CAN GET UNWITTINGLY WEDGED INTO NARROW-NETWORK PLANS

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Wedged Into Narrow-Network Plans

Despite federal rules requiring plans to keep up-to-date directories, consumers may lack access to clear information about which health plans have ‘narrow networks’ of providers or which hospitals and doctors are in or out of an insurer’s network.

As a breast cancer survivor, Donna Catanuchi said she knows she can’t go without health insurance. But her monthly premium of $855 was too high to afford.

“It was my biggest expense and killing me,” said Catanuchi, 58, of Mullica Hill, N.J.

A “navigator” who helps people find coverage through the Affordable Care Act found a solution. But it required Catanuchi, who works part time cleaning offices, to switch to a less comprehensive plan, change doctors, drive farther to her appointments and pay $110 a visit out-of-pocket — or about three times what she was paying for her follow-up cancer care.

She now pays $40 a month for coverage, after she qualified for a substantial government subsidy.

Catanuchi’s switch to a more affordable but restrictive plan reflects a broad trend in insurance plan design over the past few years. The cheaper plans offer far narrower networks of doctors and hospitals and less coverage of out-of-network care. But many consumers are overwhelmed or unaware of the trade-offs they entail, insurance commissioners and policy experts say.

With enrollment for ACA health plans beginning Nov. 1, they worry that consumers too often lack access to clear information about which health plans have “narrow networks” of medical providers or which hospitals and doctors are in or out of an insurer’s network, despite federal rules requiring plans to keep up-to-date directories.

“It’s very frustrating for consumers,” said Betsy Imholz, who represents the advocacy group Consumers Union at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. “Health plan provider directories are often inaccurate, and doctors are dropping in and out all the time.”

These more restrictive plans expose people to larger out-of-pocket costs, less access to out-of-network specialists and hospitals, and “surprise” medical bills from unforeseen out-of-network care.

More than 14 million people buy health insurance on the individual market — largely through the ACA exchanges, and they will be shopping anew this coming month.

TREND APPEARS TO BE SLOWING

For 2018, 73 percent of plans offered through the exchanges were either health maintenance organizations (HMOs) or exclusive provider organizations (EPOs), up from 54 percent in 2015.

Both have more restrictive networks and offer less out-of-network coverage compared with preferred provider organizations (PPOs), which represented 21 percent of health plans offered through the ACA exchanges in 2018, according to Avalere, a health research firm in Washington, D.C.

PPOs typically provide easier access to out-of-network specialists and facilities, and partial — sometimes even generous — payment for such services.

Measured another way, the number of ACA plans offering any out-of-network coverage declined to 29 percent in 2018 from 58 percent in 2015, according to a recent analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

For example, in California, HMO and EPO enrollment through Covered California, the state’s exchange, grew from 46 percent in 2016 to 70 percent in 2018, officials there said. Over the same period, PPO enrollment declined from 54 percent to 30 percent.

In contrast, PPOs have long been and remain the dominant type of health plan offered by employers nationwide. Forty-nine percent of the 152 million people and their dependents who were covered through work in 2018 were enrolled in a PPO-type plan. Only 16 percent were in HMOs, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual survey of employment-based health insurance.

The good news for people buying health insurance on their own is that the trend toward narrow networks appears to be slowing.

“When premiums shot up over the past few years, insurers shifted to more restrictive plans with smaller provider networks to try and lower costs and premiums,” said Chris Sloan, a director at Avalere. “With premium increases slowing, at least for now, that could stabilize.”

Some research supports this prediction. Daniel Polsky, a health economist at the University of Pennsylvania, found that the number of ACA plans nationwide with narrow physician networks declined from 25 percent in 2016 to 21 percent in 2017.

Polsky is completing an analysis of 2018 plans and expects the percent of narrow network plans to remain “relatively constant” for this year and into 2019.

“Fewer insurers are exiting the marketplace, and there’s less churn in the plans being offered,” said Polsky. “That’s good news for consumers.”

Insurers may still be contracting with fewer hospitals, however, to constrain costs in that expensive arena of care, according to a report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. It found that 53 percent of plans had narrow hospital networks in 2017, up from 48 percent in 2014.

“Narrow networks are a trade-off,” said Paul Ginsburg, a health care economist at the Brookings Institution. “They can be successful when done well. At a time when we need to find ways to control rising health care costs, narrow networks are one legitimate strategy.”

Ginsburg also notes that there’s no evidence to date that the quality of care is any less in narrow versus broader networks, or that people are being denied access to needed care.

Mike Kreidler, Washington state’s insurance commissioner, said ACA insurers in that state “are figuring out they can’t get away with provider networks that are inadequate to meet people’s needs.”

“People have voted with their feet, moving to more affordable choices like HMOs but they won’t tolerate draconian restrictions,” Kreidler said.

The state is stepping in, too. In December 2017, Kreidler fined one insurer — Coordinated Care — $1.5 million for failing to maintain an adequate network of doctors. The state suspended $1 million of the fine if the insurer had no further violations. In March 2018, the plan was docked another $100,000 for similar gaps, especially a paucity of specialists in immunology, dermatology and rheumatology. The $900,000 in potential fines continues to hang over the company’s head.

Centene Corp, which owns Coordinated Care, has pledged to improve its network.

Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Jessica Altman said she expects residents buying insurance in the individual marketplace for 2019 to have a wider choice of providers in their networks.

“We think and hope insurers are gradually building more stable networks of providers,” said Altman.

NEW STATE LAWS

Bad publicity and recent state laws are pushing insurers to modify their practices and shore up their networks.

About 20 states now have laws restricting surprise bills or balance billing, or which mandate mediation over disputed medical bills, especially those stemming from emergency care.

Even more have rules on maintaining accurate, up-to-date provider directories.

The problem is the laws vary widely in the degree to which they “truly protect consumers,” said Claire McAndrew, a health policy analyst at Families USA, a consumer advocacy group in Washington, D.C. “It’s a patchwork system with some strong consumer protections and a lot of weaker ones.”

“Some states don’t have the resources to enforce rules in this area,” said Justin Giovannelli, a researcher at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. “That takes us backward in assuring consumers get coverage that meets their needs.”

 

 

A Sense of Alarm as Rural Hospitals Keep Closing

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The potential health and economic consequences of a trend associated with states that have turned down Medicaid expansion.

Hospitals are often thought of as the hubs of our health care system. But hospital closings are rising, particularly in some communities.

“Options are dwindling for many rural families, and remote communities are hardest hit,” said Katy Kozhimannil, an associate professor and health researcher at the University of Minnesota.

Beyond the potential health consequences for the people living nearby, hospital closings can exact an economic toll, and are associated with some states’ decisions not to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act.

Since 2010, nearly 90 rural hospitals have shut their doors. By one estimate, hundreds of other rural hospitals are at risk of doing so.

In its June report to Congress, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission found that of the 67 rural hospitals that closed since 2013, about one-third were more than 20 miles from the next closest hospital.

A study published last year in Health Affairs by researchers from the University of Minnesota found that over half of rural counties now lack obstetric services. Another study, published in Health Services Research, showed that such closures increase the distance pregnant women must travel for delivery.

And another published earlier this year in JAMA found that higher-risk, preterm births are more likely in counties without obstetric units. (Some hospitals close obstetric units without closing the entire hospital.)

Ms. Kozhimannil, a co-author of all three studies, said, “What’s left are maternity care deserts in some of the most vulnerable communities, putting pregnant women and their babies at risk.”

In July, after The New York Times wrote about the struggles of rural hospitals, some doctors responded by noting that rising malpractice premiums had made it, as one put it, “economically infeasible nowadays to practice obstetrics in rural areas.”

Many other types of specialists tend to cluster around hospitals. When a hospital leaves a community, so can many of those specialists. Care for mental health and substance use are among those most likely to be in short supply after rural hospital closures.

The closure of trauma centers has also accelerated since 2001, and disproportionately in rural areas, according to a study in Health Affairs. The resulting increased travel time for trauma cases heightens the risk of adverse outcomes, including death.

Another study found that greater travel time to hospitals is associated with higher mortality rates for coronary artery bypass graft patients.

In many communities, hospitals are among the largest employers. They also draw other businesses to an area, including those within health care and others that support it (like laundry and food services, or construction).

A study in Health Services Research found that when a community loses its only hospital, per capita income falls by about 4 percent, and the unemployment increases by 1.6 percentage points.

Not all closures are problematic. Some are in areas with sufficient hospital capacity. Moreover, in many cases hospitals that close offer relatively poorer quality care than nearby ones that remain open. This forces patients into higher-quality facilities and may offset negative effects associated with the additional distance they must travel.

Perhaps for these reasons, one study published in Health Affairs found no effect of hospital closures on mortality for Medicare patients. Because it focused on older patients, the study may have missed adverse effects on those younger than 65. Nevertheless, the study found that hospital closings were associated with reduced readmission rates, which is regarded as a sign of increased quality. So it seems consolidating services at larger hospitals can sometimes help, not harm, patients.

“There are real trade-offs between consolidating expertise at larger centers versus maintaining access in local communities,” said Karen Joynt Maddox, a cardiologist and health researcher with the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and an author of the study. “The problem is that we don’t have a systematic approach to determine which services are critical to provide locally, and which are best kept at referral centers.”

Many factors can underlie the financial decision to close a hospital. Rural populations are shrinking, and the trend of hospital mergers and acquisitions can contribute to closures as services are consolidated.

Another factor: Over the long term, we are using less hospital care as more services are shifted to outpatient settings and as inpatient care is performed more rapidly. In 1960, an average appendectomy required over six days in the hospital; today one to two days is the norm.

Part of the story is political: the decision by many red states not to take advantage of federal funding to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act. Some states cited fiscal concerns for their decisions, but ideological opposition to Obamacare was another factor.

In rural areas, lower incomes and higher rates of uninsured people contribute to higher levels of uncompensated hospital care — meaning many people are unable to pay their hospital bills. Uncompensated care became less of a problem in hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid.

In a Commonwealth Fund Issue Brief, researchers from Northwestern Kellogg School of Management found that hospitals in Medicaid expansion states saved $6.2 billion in uncompensated care, with the largest reductions in states with the highest proportion of low-income and uninsured patients. Consistent with these findings, the vast majority of recent hospital closings have been in states that have not expanded Medicaid.

In every year since 2011, more hospitals have closed than opened. In 2016, for example, 21 hospitals closed, 15 of them in rural communities. This month, another rural hospital in Kansas announced it was closing, and next week people in Kansas, and in some other states, will vote in elections that could decide whether Medicaid is expanded.

Richard Lindrooth, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Public Health, led a study in Health Affairs on the relationship between Medicaid expansion and hospitals’ financial health. Hospitals in nonexpansion states took a financial hit and were far more likely to close. In the continuing battle within some states about whether or not to expand Medicaid, “hospitals’ futures hang in the balance,” he said.

 

 

What’s at Stake for Health Care in Your District This Midterm Election?

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What’s at Stake for Health Care in Your District This Midterm Election?

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On November 6, 2018, Californians will head to the polls to vote for who will represent them in Congress. The outcome of races could have significant implications for health care in California and nationwide. Major policies at stake include the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Medicaid program (called Medi-Cal in California), and protections for those with preexisting conditions.

What’s at stake for California?

  • 1.4 million Californians purchase coverage through Covered California, the health insurance marketplace established under the ACA. Close to 90% receive federal subsidies to help them afford their premiums.
  • 13.5 million Californians are covered by Medi-Cal.
  • 6.7 million Californians would have lost coverage by 2027 if the last attempt by Congress to repeal the ACA and cut Medicaid (through a proposal called Graham-Cassidy) had passed. It is widely anticipated that a future attempt to repeal the ACA would be modeled after Graham-Cassidy.
  • 550,000 fewer jobs would have been created in California by 2027 if Graham-Cassidy had passed.
  • 16.7 million nonelderly Californians are estimated to live with a preexisting condition.

What’s at stake in your district?

 

On the Rise – Out-of-Pocket Healthcare Spending in 2017

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Leveraging financial transaction data, the JPMorgan Chase Institute provides a unique cash flow view of families’ healthcare out-of-pocket spending and financial burden. In 2017 we released the first estimates of out-of-pocket healthcare spending levels and burden at the state and county level from 2013 to 2016, from our JPMorgan Chase Institute Healthcare Out-of-pocket Spending Panel (JPMCI HOSP) data asset. In this new report, we describe enhancements to, and key findings from, the updated JPMCI HOSP data asset that includes the first available estimates of 2017 healthcare out-of-pocket spending trends, as well as a first-ever look at year-over-year trends at the state and county level and for different demographic groups.

Our key findings are:

Finding 1: Year-over-year growth in out-of-pocket healthcare spending levels accelerated since 2014 to 8.5 percent in 2017. The burden of healthcare spending as a percent of take-home income ticked up slightly.

Finding 2: In 2017 high-income families experienced the fastest growth in healthcare spending, while low-income families experienced the highest growth in healthcare spending burden.

Finding 3: In 2017, families in Utah spent the most on and were the most burdened by out-of-pocket healthcare spending, while families in California saw the highest growth in spending levels.

Finding 4: Out-of-pocket healthcare spending grew the most at hospitals and ‘other’ healthcare providers and decreased at drug stores for the third consecutive year.

 

 

Repeal of ACA on Republican agenda after midterms

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Repeal would end the ACA’s most popular provision, to cover those with preexisting conditions.

Republicans could try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act if they win enough seats in the midterm election this November, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Providers want to keep the ACA to minimize the cost of uncompensated care from treating individuals who have no insurance.

Insurers this year have turned around earlier losses and exits, expanding their footprint in the market and, in many cases, offering lowering premium rates for 2019.

Studies show most consumers like the ACA but remain confused about the healthcare law, with close to 80 percent unaware that open enrollment starts on November 1.

THE TREND

Republicans last year tried and failed to repeal the ACA. In another attempt to get rid of the individual and employer mandates for coverage, the GOP this summer introduced the “skinny” repeal in the Health Care Freedom Act.

On July 28, Senator John McCain cast the deciding vote when he joined two other Republican senators in voting down the skinny repeal of the ACA that the Congressional Budget Office said could result in 16 million more people becoming uninsured. Provider groups such as America’s Essential Hospitals and the American Medical Association, voiced their approval that the skinny repeal failed.

Republicans got rid of the individual and employer mandates in this year’s budget bill.

The Trump Administration also introduced a less expensive alternative to ACA plans in allowing consumers to buy short-term limited duration plans that offer coverage for up to a year and can be extended for three years. The short-term plans are not mandated by law, as are ACA plans, to cover pre-existing conditions and offer essential benefits.

THEIR TAKE

Republicans have long promised to end the ACA because they say it’s not working.

OUR TAKE

Republicans have been chipping away at Obamacare and the government has drastically cut funds to promote it, but at the same time, the Department of Health and Human Services has helped to stabilize the market. Most significantly, it has allowed insurers to silver load plans to apply full premium increases to silver plans in the ACA to make up for the loss of cost-sharing reduction payments that were eliminated by President Trump. Since nine out of 10 consumers get tax subsidies for buying plans, this move was essentially subsidized by the federal government.

Even if the GOP retains its majority this November, repeal of the ACA will be an uphill battle. It would end the ACA’s most popular provision to cover those with preexisting conditions.

President Trump tweeted on Friday his support of protecting those who have preexisting conditioins saying. “All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support. Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!”

 

 

 

CMS announces new waiver flexibility in ACA market

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States will have the ability to allow individuals to use ACA subsidies when buying short-term limited duration plans.

States are getting new flexibility in waivers to the Affordable Care Act, including being able to target ACA subsidies for individuals who want to buy short-term, limited duration plans, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said today.

What is not flexible is protecting access to coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.

Verma gave no specifics on the types of waivers that will be considered, but said the agency was preparing to release a series of waiver concepts. More specifics are expected to be released in the coming weeks.

The policy goes into effect today but is expected to impact states next year, for the 2020 plan year.

IMPACT

The effect of the waivers will likely not be known until next year.

But the allowance of short-term insurance as an ACA alternative could have a more immediate effect as consumers choose plans during open enrollment starting November 1.

The Trump Administration this year extended the length of short-term plans from three months to one year, with an extension allowed for up to three years. Because these plans would not be obligated to cover the essential benefits mandated under the ACA, premiums are expected to be lower.

Opponents have said this would cause an exodus of healthy consumers from the traditional ACA market and rising prices for those left behind.

THE TREND

CMS has been taking credit for stabilizing the ACA market and lowering premiums through the use of waivers and by easing regulations.

For instance, reinsurance waivers have helped reduce premium costs, CMS said. To date, CMS has approved eight state waivers, and all but one have been a reinsurance waiver for states to develop high-risk pools to help pay the cost of high claims.

The reason for the lack of other approved waivers is due to the previous Administration limiting the types of state waiver proposals that the government would approve, CMS said.

The new Section 1332 waivers, called state relief and empowerment waivers, will allow states to “get out from under onerous rules of Obamacare,” Verma said.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW

Under Section 1332 of the ACA, states can waive certain provisions of the law as long as the new state waiver plan meets specific criteria, or “guardrails,” that help guarantee people retain access to coverage that is at least as comprehensive and affordable as without the waiver; covers as many individuals; and is deficit neutral to the federal government.

The new waivers should aim to provide increased access to affordable private market coverage; encourage sustainable spending growth; foster state innovation; support and empower those in need; and promote consumer-driven healthcare, CMS said.

ON THE RECORD

“Now, states will have a clearer sense of how they can take the lead on making available more insurance options, within the bounds of the Affordable Care Act, that are fiscally sustainable, private sector-driven, and consumer-friendly,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

“The Trump Administration inherited a health insurance market with skyrocketing premiums and dwindling choices,” said CMS Administrator Seema Verma. “Under the president’s leadership, the Administration recently announced average premiums will decline on the federal exchange for the first time and more insurers will return to offer increased choices.

“But our work isn’t done. Premiums are still much too high and choice is still too limited. This is a new day — this is a new approach to empower states to provide relief. States know much better than the federal government how their markets work. With today’s announcement, we are making sure that they have the ability to adopt innovative strategies to reduce costs for Americans, while providing higher quality options.”