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As States Create Health Insurance Exchanges, Insurers Are Benefiting from the ACA

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

The same insurance companies that spent millions of dollars working to defeat the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) claiming it would raise costs and disrupt coverage, are seeing their profit margins soar to levels not seen since before the recession and are benefiting financially from the law, a Bloomberg Government study shows.

Insurers recorded their highest combined quarterly net income of the past 10 years after the law was signed in 2010, said Peter Gosselin, the study author and senior healthcare analyst for Bloomberg Government. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Managed Health-Care Index rose 36 percent in the period, four times higher than the S&P 500.  “The industry that was the loudest, most persistent critic of this law, the industry whose analysts and executives predicted it would suffer immensely because of the law, has thrived,” Gosselin said. “There is a shift to government work under way that is going to represent a fundamental change in their business model.”

Health insurers gave $86.2 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to oppose the law after Obama administration officials disparaged their desire to chase profits by raising customer premiums.  America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), still claims the law will increase costs and cause consumers to lose coverage.  Even so, the insurers saw their average operating profit margins expand to 8.24 percent in the six quarters since the ACA became law, compared with 6.88 percent during the previous 18 months.

One significant finding of an annual California Employer Health Benefits Survey released by the California HealthCare Foundation, a research and grant-making non-profit organization, is that in California fewer companies provided healthcare coverage for their employees last year; those that did raised premiums for coverage. According to the survey, premiums have risen 153 percent since 2002, a rate more than five times the increase in California’s inflation rate.  During the last two years alone, the proportion of state employers offering coverage to workers fell to 63 percent from 73 percent, according to the survey.

“This is a departure from previous years and could be an early sign of future changes,” the foundation report noted in commenting on data collected between July and October 2011 in interviews with 770 private firm benefit managers.

Increasing costs and shrinking coverage are speeding up, said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a group that advocates for expanded health insurance coverage.  “They are frankly multi-decade trends,” he said. “What is notable is that this is more significant than usual.”  What’s been a “gradual erosion of employer-based coverage in good years” has evolved into “a steep one in bad years,” Wright said. “To be down to 63 percent (of California companies offering coverage) is huge.  It used to be up over 80 percent.”

There is good news, however, in the fact that 13 states have functioning health insurance exchanges, two have pending legislation to establish them, while another five are planning their exchanges. Health insurance exchanges are state-regulated standardized healthcare plans where individuals can purchase health insurance and be eligible for federal subsidies.  The remaining 30 states are moving more slowly.  For example, Pennsylvania is gradually moving toward a health insurance exchange.  “Pennsylvania has taken steps towards the establishment of an exchange, which I think is positive — there are other states that have moved more aggressively, including states whose governors are part of the lawsuit,” said Sharon Ward, director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a non-government organization that supports the federal health care law.  Two states — Louisiana and Arkansas — have opted out of the insurance exchange program.

Insurers are of two minds regarding the issue of insurance exchanges. Some favor the programs because they would help them to reach more consumers.  Consumer advocacy groups and insurance analysts claim that exchanges would increase competition to the industry, with the ultimate result of cutting prices nationwide.

Writing in the Green Bay Press Gazette, Jeff Mason, CEO of the BayCare Clinic, believes that, generally speaking, healthcare payments need fixing. According to Mason, “Healthcare finance is complicated even in the best of times.  Unfortunately, it isn’t the best of times.  We’re in a climactic period in healthcare when the finance mechanisms don’t work anymore.  Employers can’t continue to pay the spiraling healthcare costs.  Providers can’t continue to shift their low-reimbursement government work to employers. The government can’t expect any more free care out of providers.  Right now, our clinic collects less than half of what we charge to all of our customers in aggregate.  We collect 11 cents of every dollar we charge to Medicaid, and 13 cents of every dollar we charge to Medicare.  This is considered our “low-pay” business, and is extremely difficult to manage financially.

“This physician/hospital payment problem is a government experiment that started in the 1980s and has gone terribly wrong.  It followed the concept that a large purchaser of a service should get a better price and began discounting government payments to providers.  Medicare started by shaving a few percent, but then it got larger and larger.  All along, health care providers were shifting the shortfalls to the private employers.  At the same time, health care expense continued to grow as we obtained more expensive new medications and new technologies to improve patient treatments.”

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ACA Gives 2.5 Million Young Adults Healthcare Coverage

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

The number of young adults who have no medical coverage has contracted by 2.5 million since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) took effect, according to a new analysis by the Obama administration.  That decline is 2½ times larger than earlier government and private estimates, which showed about one million Americans ages 19 – 25 had acquired coverage.

Obama administration officials said they now have more comprehensive data and are slicing the numbers more precisely than the government typically does, in an attempt to identify the impact of a popular provision in the law.  Thanks to the ACA, young adults can remain on their parents’ health insurance plans until their 26th birthdays.  Families have flocked to sign up their offspring, making the transition to work in a challenging economic environment a bit easier.

“Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 2.5 million more young adults don’t have to live with the fear and uncertainty of going without health insurance,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.  “Moms and dads around the country can breathe a little easier knowing their children are covered.”

“This comparison makes it clear that the increase in coverage among 19 to 25 year-olds can be directly attributed to the Affordable Care Act’s new dependent-coverage provision,” according to an Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) brief.  “Furthermore, the coverage gain for young adults was entirely due to an increase in private coverage (from 49 percent to 58 percent), with no change in Medicaid coverage during this period.”

“The increase in coverage among 19- to 25-year-olds can be directly attributed to the Affordable Care Act’s new dependent coverage provision,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  “Initial gains from this policy have continued to grow as…students graduate from high school and college.”

That age group previously recorded the highest uninsured rate. Now, 26- to 35-year-olds have that dubious distinction by a narrow margin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to the HHS survey, nearly 36 percent of Americans ages 19 – 25 — more than 10.5 million people — were uninsured in the third quarter of 2010, before the law’s provision took effect.  The majority of employer-based health plans began carrying the provision January 1, 2011.  By the 2nd quarter of 2011, the proportion of uninsured young adults had fallen to slightly more than 27 percent, or about eight million people.

And just who are these young adults?  Some are transitioning from school to work. Others are trying to start their careers by working at low-wage jobs that don’t usually come with healthcare coverage.  Some – known as the “invincibles” – pass up job-based health insurance because they don’t think they’ll need it and prefer some extra money in their paychecks.

Similarly, the National Center for Health Statistics has documented a broadly similar trend, only not nearly as spectacular.  According to administration officials, those statistics do not focus on the change from calendar quarter to calendar quarter, as the new HHS report does.  Instead, they pool data over longer time periods; that tends to dilute the law’s perceived impact.

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Medicare Advantage Premiums to Fall Four Percent in 2012

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

The Obama administration’s announcement that Medicare Advantage insurance plans premiums will decline in 2012, at a time when enrollment is expected to rise, is good news for the leading health insurers in that segment.  Wall Street analyst Ana Gupte said that the announcement suggests strengthening support in the administration for the privately-run versions of the government’s Medicare program, which covers the elderly and disabled.  Medicare Advantage plans offer basic Medicare coverage with extras like vision or dental coverage oratremiums lower than standard Medicare rates.  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that Medicare Advantage premiums will average four percent less in 2012, and insurers running the plans believe that enrollment will rise by 10 percent.  “Overall, we were very encouraged by the announcement and see this as reinforcing our bullish thesis on the Medicare Advantage and (prescription drug coverage) segments,” according to Gupte.

It’s highly unusual to see healthcare insurance premiums falling. Reduced premiums and growing enrollment are the opposite of what insurers and Republicans predicted would happen to Medicare Advantage after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The ACA cut payments to fee-for-service Medicare Advantage plans by about $136 billion over the next 10 tears.  Right before the law passed, American’s Health Insurance Plans predicted that “millions of seniors in Medicare Advantage will lose their coverage, and millions more will face higher premiums and reduced benefits.”  So what accounts for the drop?  The decrease in premiums doesn’t have a lot to do with policy decisions made in the ACA.  It’s three outside factors that are putting downward pressure on Medicare.  One is that Medicare costs are growing more slowly.  Both in Medicare and in private insurance, the recession has seen patients using fewer medical services.  This looks to be especially true in Medicare, where seniors might have more limited resources because they tend to live on a fixed income.  The latest S&P Healthcare Economic Indices data indicates that Medicare spending appears to be rising at a slower rate than just a few years ago.

Jonathan Blum, director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Center for Medicare, said the more affordable costs and growth forecasts demonstrate that companies are still interested in offering such plans despite new consumer protections under the healthcare law and payment caps to insurers.  According to Blum, “We can say with complete accuracy that despite projections in 2010 that the program will decline, the program has grown and will continue to grow.  The plans have made a very strong statement that they intend to commit to the program.  Plans that do a better job serving the needs of their Medicare members should be rewarded and all plans should be encouraged to improve their performance.” 

Healthcare insurers warned that seniors can expect more costs and receive fewer benefits from their Medicare Advantage plans after payment cuts take effect.  They point to projections from the Congressional Budget Office, which predicted Medicare Advantage enrollment would fall to just 7.8 million participants in 2019.  “Medicare Advantage plans remain committed to the program and are doing everything they can to preserve benefits and keep coverage as affordable and possible for beneficiaries,” said Robert Zirkelbach of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).  “However, as these cuts take effect in the coming years, Medicare Advantage beneficiaries will face higher out-of-pocket costs, reduced benefits, and fewer health care choices.”  The group and its insurer members, who opposed many of the healthcare reforms before they passed, are now committed to implementing the law.

“Many people raised fears that under the Affordable Care Act, beneficiaries would see their Medicare Advantage options shrink and their premiums rise,” Sebelius said.  “Instead, we have seen just the opposite.”

Some in the industry are looking at other ways to bring Medicare costs down.  According to the Fierce Pharma website, “Healthcare industry leaders are poised to make their own deficit-reduction suggestions — including some that might not win them points in a popularity contest.  Uncertain what budget cuts the deficit-reduction committee might propose, the Healthcare Leadership Council has come up with its own proposal that would ask Medicare beneficiaries to endure more belt-tightening themselves.  The group is aiming to put forward an alternative more palatable than across-the-board Medicare cuts mandated by the deficit-reduction bill if the “supercommittee” doesn’t agree on its own plan.  And it’s betting that its proposal will be easier to bear than budget-cutting ideas floated in the past, such as drug re-importation.  The council, which includes Big Pharma executives, hospital companies and insurers, crafted a plan that would raise the Medicare-eligibility age little by little to 67 from 65, beginning in 2014. It would hike co-pays and deductibles.  It would require well-off seniors to pay higher premiums.  And it would add private-sector competition to traditional Medicare coverage, pitting government-subsidized private insurance plans against regular Medicare.  Requiring seniors to pay more might be considered a non-starter; after all, consumer groups, particularly AARP, have vociferously fought against such moves in the past.  But the council figures that provider-based Medicare cuts will end up costing beneficiaries when all is said and done.  ‘This thinking that we’re protecting beneficiaries because we’re only cutting providers — that’s mythical,’ said Mary Grealy, the council’s president.”

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Most Unemployed Americans Have No Healthcare Insurance

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Nearly 75 percent of unemployed Americans can’t afford needed healthcare or have their prescriptions filled; another 50 percent struggle with medical bills or medical debt.  As many as 60 percent of working Americans depend on employer-based health insurance;  when 15 million working-age adults lost their jobs between 2008 and 2010, an estimated nine million also lost their health insurance, according to the Commonwealth Fund report.

The report also concludes that when the most important provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) are fully in effect in 2014, unemployed people will have more health insurance choices.  Unfortunately, the current lack of options has led to a health and financial crisis for many Americans who lost their health insurance benefits along with their jobs.  The report’s researchers analyzed data from the 2010 Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey.

“It’s clear from this report that losing a job and health insurance simultaneously is a serious threat to a family’s health and financial stability,” Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis said.  She noted that “the Affordable Care Act will assure that families already struggling with the devastation of unemployment will still be able to get the health care they need and will be protected if they become seriously ill.”

The survey of 3,033 adults was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between July, 2010, and November, 2010.  The results indicate that many individuals who lost health coverage are carrying medical debt or skipping needed healthcare or neglect to fill prescriptions because of cost.  In 2010, two of five (40 percent) adults aged 19 to 64 — or 73 million people — reported difficulty paying medical bills, being contacted by a collection agency about unpaid bills, having to change their way of life to pay bills.  This is up from 34 percent, or 58 million people, in 2005.  Increasingly, cost is becoming a barrier to getting needed care. 

Approximately 70 percent of adults who earned less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level and lost their jobs and health benefits became uninsured, compared with about 42 percent of those at or above 200 percent of the poverty level.  Just eight percent of lower-income workers continued their coverage through COBRA after losing their jobs, compared with about 21 percent of those with higher incomes who chose COBRA. 

“Clearly, COBRA subsidies made a big difference for millions of unemployed people who had no other option for affordable health insurance coverage,” Michelle Doty, vice president at the Commonwealth Fund said.  “As the economy continues to struggle to recover, extending those subsidies would assure that workers, particularly those with lower incomes, could maintain their health insurance.”

The report  — which advocates for universal coverage — the Commonwealth Fund said that 60 percent of those left uninsured during the recession were unable to find a replacement plan they could afford and 35 percent were refused coverage by insurers.  “Once you are unemployed and uninsured, it’s nearly impossible to afford COBRA or buy an individual policy,” said Commonwealth Fund Vice President Sara Collins.

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No More Surcharges on Pre-existing Conditions

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

There’s good news for Americans who lack healthcare insurance and have pre-existing medical conditions.  As of July 1, 2011, the Obama administration reduced the premiums  these people pay to purchase high-risk insurance plans that the federal government operates in 17 states and the District of Columbia.  Called pre-existing condition insurance plans (PCIPs), this coverage for people with medical conditions that often make then unable to buy insurance on the individual market was created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). 

Virginia and six other states will slash their premiums by 40 percent; other states and the District of Columbia will see cuts of between 15 and 25 percent; Mississippi will cut its rates by just two percent.  The revised rates give greater consideration to state-specific data and closely track the standard rates for individual policies in each state.  “Now, the program has been up and running for six to nine months, we’ve had an opportunity to redefine the methodology,” said Steve Larsen, director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Advocates for consumers and federal officials hope that the reduced premiums will encourage additional people to opt into the plans.  Although approximately 375,000 people were expected to sign up for the PCIPs, just 21,454 had enrolled as of April 30, 2011.  The biggest roadblocks are seen as high premiums and a legal requirement that enrollees lack healthcare insurance for six months prior to joining the program.

Another provision of the law could have the potential to make the plans even more affordable.  Some insurers are already cutting premiums to meet the new “medical loss ratio” requirements.  (Medical claims paid are considered losses in insurance jargon.)  If difficult economic times continue and people cut back on medical care, other insurers may follow suit.  “Plans are getting nervous about how big the rebates they’re going to have to pay are,” said Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who’s a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Compared to the legal requirement that people be uninsured for six months before signing up for the new plans, high premiums are probably a bigger stumbling block to enrollment, experts say. They can’t really do anything about the six months, because that’s in the law,” says Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, who heads the health insurance and managed care committee for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.  “But they can bring down the cost, which will help.”

The trend to ever-increasing healthcare premiums has led some organizations to ask for an extreme solution. Recently, the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) and Health Care for All issued a plea to freeze healthcare premiums for one year to sort out a better solution for healthcare companies and individuals alike.  The freeze’s supporters argue that the price hikes of health insurance have not evened out, despite the fact that more people are facing economic difficulties.  During the year-long freeze, the hope is that consumers will be better educated to find the best deals for their insurance and that companies could find ways to better meet their customers’ needs.

The cost reduction has made a major difference to Kathleen Watson of Lake City, FL, who had been uninsured since 2004 when COBRA coverage under her husband’s previous policy expired.  Because she has leukocytosis — a constantly elevated white blood cell count — locating affordable coverage was impossible.  Watson found herself in an even more difficult position in 2009 when she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and developed an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection while hospitalized with pneumonia.

When the ACA created the new plans for people with pre-existing medical conditions, Watson looked into coverage.  Unfortunately, the $605 monthly premium was more than she could afford on what she earns running a medical transport business.  When she learned that rates in the three plans were being reduced by 40 percent, Watson checked out the plans again.  This time, she signed up for an affordable $363 a month that started July 1.  “I’m just happy to have insurance now,” Watson said, noting that she immediately needs a CT scan and a lung biopsy to check out enlarged lymph nodes in her right lung, bladder and colon.  “Hopefully it does what it says.”

Discussions about further reductions could be in the works.  “It’s possible,” that the medical loss ratio requirements might further depress PCIP premiums, Larsen said.  “I wouldn’t care to speculate about that.”

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Virginia Appeal Confirms the ACA’s Individual Mandate

Monday, September 19th, 2011

The Obama administration won a round in the legal battle over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) when a federal appeals court tossed out two lawsuits in Virginia.  The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in both lawsuits — one filed by Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, the second by Liberty University – that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue.  This is a rejection of the first case that ended with a ruling that the healthcare reform law was unconstitutional.  Additional cases remain active, including the lawsuit filed by 26 other states, which means that the issue has by not gone away.

Virginia argued that it had the right to challenge the individual mandate – a key proviso of the law that requires people to buy health insurance by 2014 or pay a tax penalty – because it interferes with a state law that says residents can’t be forced to purchase health insurance.  According to the court, “To permit a state to litigate whenever it enacts a statute declaring its opposition to federal law” would “convert the federal judiciary into a forum for the vindication of a state’s generalized grievances about the conduct of government.”  During oral arguments, a lawyer for the Obama administration said that the case “fails at the outset” because the mandate is applicable to individuals and not the state.  After the decision was handed down, Cuccinelli expressed “disappointment” that the case was thrown out.  According to Cuccinelli, “the Court did not even reach the merits on the key question of Virginia’s lawsuit – whether Congress has a power never before recognized in American history: the power to force one citizen to purchase a good or service from another citizen.”

In the case brought by Liberty University — a private Christian school — the court said in a 2 – 1 ruling that it was blocking the case because a federal tax law stripped it of jurisdiction to decide the issue.  The Court was the first to rule that the individual mandate is essentially a tax.  Because the mandate cannot be enforced until 2014, the Court ruled that the Anti-Injunction Act “strips us of jurisdiction” from hearing a pre-enforcement challenge.  “What the Court said is that the penalty for not complying with the mandate functions as a tax that cannot be challenged until it has been assessed,” said Kevin Walsh, a law professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell reacted to the ruling, saying “Today, a three judge panel, consisting of two judges appointed by President Barack Obama and one by former President Bill Clinton, found that Virginia lacks standing to challenge the individual mandate provision of the federal healthcare law.  We respectfully disagree with the panel’s reasoning.  To conclude that a state has no standing to challenge an expensive and burdensome federal mandate on its citizens that the state has banned in its law, might cause James Madison and George Mason, Virginia’s principal drafters of our nation’s founding documents, to promptly roll in their graves.  To dismiss a Virginia statute as a basis for standing, declaring it to be ‘quintessentially political,’ and asserting that a state cannot be a ‘constitutional watchdog’ undermines our precious principles of federalism.  This decision must be promptly appealed.

“As federal courts across the country continue to come to differing conclusions on the merits of cases arguing the unconstitutionality of the federal healthcare law, today’s decision further exemplifies why these cases should be expedited to the nation’s highest court.  It is the Supreme Court that will ultimately determine whether the federal mandate on every citizen to purchase health insurance violates the U.S. Constitution.  States and businesses continue to expend time and money and languish in uncertainty as they try to come into compliance with a law that may ultimately be ruled unconstitutional.  It is exasperating that the President and the Justice Department oppose a prompt resolution of this case through an expedited appeal.  America needs finality in this case,” according to McDonnell.

Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, who was appointed to the bench by President Clinton, wrote that the only apparent function of the state law was “to declare Virginia’s opposition to a federal insurance mandate.”  The state law was enacted just days after President Obama signed the ACA into law.

Writing in U.S. News & World Report, Scott Galupo says that “Cuccinelli and co. follow a long trail from the 18th century British jurist William Blackstone to the Dred Scott case to the New Deal to the present day.  The conservative team, at first, makes a tight, prudential case against the Obamacare mandate that I, in my nonprofessional capacity, happen to favor.”  Parsing Cuccinelli’s statement about the decision, Galupo notes that “In plainer, get-to-the-point English: We grant you the social safety net established under the ‘Roosevelt Settlement.’  We recognize Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce.  We even grant that this power could conceivably deliver universal healthcare.  But for Pete’s sake, don’t try to include ‘inactivity’ — that is, not buying a health insurance plan on the private market — under its purview.  Because, once you regulate the act of doing nothing, what’s left to regulate?  Er, nothing.  Thus, does the state’s power to tax and police become theoretically unlimited?  But, later in the body of the piece, Team Cuccinelli begins to play other, more presently familiar cards.  Glenn Beck fans will recognize the faces in the rogue’s gallery: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, progressive philosopher John Dewey, and others who, this argument goes, created the post-New Deal legal and philosophical edifice.  Wouldn’t you know it, this welfare-state stuff constitutes a violation of natural law — which, ipso facto, means economic laissez-faire — and a lurch into moral chaos.  Echoing the newly popular Hayek, Cuccinelli’s article asserts the primacy of economic rights while characterizing as relativistic the not-exclusively-liberal jurisprudential argument that personhood and dignity precede the marketplace.  (Last I checked, I’ve never seen an unborn baby sign a contract.)”

The Obama administration remains optimistic about the ACA.  “When it ends, we are confident we will prevail,” White House adviser Stephanie Cutter said.

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Senators Question CMS Rules for ACOs

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

Some Senators want the rules for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) rewritten to increase their acceptance by providers. “An ACO model that can increase provider coordination and patient accountability would be a step in the right direction compared to today’s fragmented delivery system,” wrote the senators, led by Mike Enzi (R-WY) to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Donald Berwick. “However, it is increasingly clear that this proposed rule misses the target.”

According to the Senators, the ACO rules have misaligned incentives and accountability, as well as an unclear return on investment for physicians and other providers. The Senators highlighted healthcare providers who have raised concerns about the ACO rules, including the American Hospital Association, which released a study that estimated six to 14 times higher start-up costs for the new entities than estimated by CMS.

The AHA study determined that the costs of elements to successfully manage the care of a defined population is considerably higher – $11.6 to $26.1 million – than the $1.8 million estimated by CMS in its proposed rule for start-up and one year of operations. “CMS’ estimate falls short of the mark,” said Rich Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the AHA. “The shared savings rate with ACOs should be adjusted to reflect these costs in order to encourage and enable participation in this important program.” Specific areas of concern include network development and management , care coordination, quality improvement and utilization management ; clinical information systems; and data analytics.

In addition to Enzi, the letter was signed by Tom Coburn (R-OK); Jon Kyl R-AZ); Mike Crapo (R-ID); John Cornyn (R-TX); Pat Roberts (R-KS); and Richard Burr (R-NC).  According to Coburn, who is also a physician, “The letter I signed today echoes the reservations of health professionals who have expressed deep concerns about the well-intended, but ultimately unworkable, ACO regulations recently proposed by the administration. It is certainly my hope that the administration will not misread this letter as partisan, but will work to address the underlying problems of misaligned incentives and regulatory uncertainty that have elicited such concern by a range of health care institutions and providers. If the administration withdraws the regulation, they will find strong bipartisan support among Congress and stakeholders to craft a proposal that encourages broad participation in innovative models to achieve lower costs and better care.”

Berwick and CMS officials believe that organizations that participated in demonstration projects will back the rules because the results showed that Medicare saved more than $38 million in the years of the pilot program; the medical groups that participated got performance payments from the feds totaling more than $31 million. Among the participants are some of the nation’s most prestigious medical systems, including The Mayo Clinic, The Cleveland Clinic and the Geisinger Health System in western Pennsylvania.

Part of the problem, according to The Hill, is that budgetary concerns were the elephant in the room when the Obama administration wrote the proposed ACO rule. This resulted in regulations requiring stringent quality improvements that offered no upfront funding for hospitals to change their procedures. According to regulators, the proposed regulation is open for public comment and can be fine-tuned. CMS recently unveiled new tools to help hospitals start care coordination efforts, for example, by giving them the money they’re supposed to save Medicare through more efficient patient care.

According to the letter, “We have been struck by the increasingly diverse chorus of concerns many of our nation’s leading health care institutions have raised in recent days. The concerns…from some of our nation’s most knowledgeable and innovative health care providers are clear. Incentives and accountability are misaligned. Detailed requirements are complex and return on investment is uncertain.”

Although the Senators complimented the work put into the ACO rules draft, the letter said that feedback received from providers around the country brought the Senators to the conclusion that the proposed ACO regulation will not fulfill its purpose.

Another perspective is offered by Robert Tennant, a managing associate with Health Directions, who says that “I’d like to offer another point of view. Certainly, for most healthcare organizations, transitioning to an ACO will create short-term expense and disruption. At Health Directions, we are finding that healthcare organizations are not dismissing ACOs outright, but they are first asking: What do we stand to gain? In some cases the answer may be either not clear or not favorable. Regardless, there is a potential upside if the focus remains on increasing quality and efficiency of care delivery. As we weigh the future of ACOs, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The point of discussion needs to shift from whether or not to become a formally organized ACO down the road toward a more focused evaluation of which ACO-type elements are worth adopting now. A commitment to achieving meaningful use with an electronic health record (EHR) is a step in that direction, as is participating in a quality-driven pay for performance program. Both have short-term, well-defined financial rewards attached to them and both will likely increase quality of care. The key is for healthcare organizations to remain focused on the underlying thought behind ACOs — improving care and reducing costs. And that really is worth getting excited about.”

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Medicare Part D Costs Expected to Fall in 2012

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

Medicare Increased competition between Medicare Part D plans, greater generic drug use and more transparency for consumers are why the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) expects lower Medicare prescription drug premiums next year.  Next year, the average Medicare prescription drug plan premium will cost approximately $30, compared with an average of $30.76 in 2011, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  CMS Administrator Dr. Donald Berwick said that the average premium is about 44 percent lower than what was estimated in 2003.

The Part D drug benefit,  enacted when George W. Bush was president, lets seniors and others on Medicare sign up for a privately administered, government-subsidized health plan to purchase their prescriptions.  The program enjoys high popularity with beneficiaries and has proven to be far less costly than budget analysts originally expected, partly because of competition among private plans and the growing use of less costly generic drugs.

HHS also announced that nearly 900,000 Americans in the Medicare Part D “doughnut hole” have benefited from a 50 percent discount in brand-name drugs in 2012.  HHS estimates that out-of-pocket savings on drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries to be about $461 million from January through June of this year.  The Obama administration has worked to strengthen the Medicare drug benefit with the help of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The law phases out the coverage gap, long seen as one of the program’s weaknesses.  Last year, approximately four million seniors received $250 rebates because they fell into the gap in coverage.  This year, the law will provide 50 percent discounts on prescriptions for those who hit the doughnut hole.

Seniors can chose from a variety of Part D plans,  and Dr. Donald Berwick, administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said competition “clearly helps” keep premiums from rising.  At the same time, he warned against overextending Part D.  HHS said 17 million seniors have received at least one preventive healthcare service without a co-pay.  The ACA eliminated co-pays for many preventive services under Medicare and will ultimately do the same for private insurance.

“This decline in the average creates more risk for plans like ‘Humana’ and ‘United Health’ that have a significant portion of the Part D members,” said Peter Costa, a Wells Fargo analyst.  Costa said one reason for the lower bids could be last year’s joint venture between Humana and Wal-Mart stores to offer Medicare drug coverage with the lowest premiums in the country.

“The Affordable Care Act is delivering on its promise of better health care for people with Medicare,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.  “People with Medicare who hit the doughnut hole are paying less for their prescription drugs, 17 million Americans have received free preventive services and prescription drug premiums will remain low.  These are important steps that are making a difference in the lives of millions of Americans right now.”

“Medicare beneficiaries will have more affordable prescription drug coverage next year as a result of vigorous competition in the Part D program and Medicare drug plans’ efforts to encourage seniors to choose the most affordable medicines,” said Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans.  Ignagni noted that “taxpayers are also saving billions of dollars as the total cost of the program continues to be far below original projections.”

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Medicare ACOs Receive Mixed Reviews

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

A Medicare pilot program started in 2005 chose 10 groups for an experiment in improving quality and controlling costs. This foreshadowed some of the cost-control rules in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) , with groups given bonuses for meeting approximately 15 quality measures, and for spending at least two percent less than conventional Medicare.  This program is a forerunner to the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) model that is one of the prime means by which the ACA’s supporters expect it to control costs.  Now that the results are in, the quality issues were met, but the issue of cost proved to be far more difficult to achieve.

Writing in The Atlantic, Megan McArdle says that Donald Berwick, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), says “he is optimistic about the potential of ACOs to lower costs by coordinating care, although he acknowledged that savings from the experiment ‘were unevenly distributed, and they were modest…if care is correctly coordinated, costs fall and quality rises.  To me, it’s a matter of how fast we will get there, not whether we will get there.’  He may be right; sometimes you just haven’t done a program correctly.  On the other hand, sometimes programs don’t work, were never going to work, and can’t be made to work.  Even in the latter case, you still hear the sort of thing that Berwick is saying from the proponents of said programs: we need more time, more money, more staff, more rules.  People have usually spent years, even decades, investing in their ideas; when contrary evidence comes in, their first instinct is rarely to say, ‘Well, that’s too bad–it sure seemed like it was going to work, but I guess it didn’t!’.  No, what they want to do is double down.”

Started in 2005 by the George W. Bush administration, the experiment offered “performance payments” to participants that met most of 32 measures of quality — half as many as in the proposed rule — and spent at least two percent less for Medicare patients.  Despite their spotty financial progress, all 10 medical groups in the experiment met the quality requirements.  Additionally the program promoted care innovations, according to administration officials, outside health policy experts and leaders of the groups.

The Obama administration recently announced new options for Medicare ACOs.  The new shared savings components complement the proposed rules that will be finalized this year, Dr. Berwick said.  This pioneering model has been in process for months and that the latest announcement was not in response to skepticism about the proposed rules.  “This is responsive to some of the concerns on how to get started faster,” Dr. Berwick said.  “That’s what we’re getting asked about a lot. The criticism is comment we’re welcoming.”

CMS’ announcement represents a step in the right direction, although additional changes to the shared savings program need to be included to assure physician involvement, said American Medical Association’s (AMA) Immediate Past President J. James Rohack, MD.  “The AMA is pleased that (the innovation center) is working to assist physicians at varying stages of readiness who want to participate in Medicare ACOs,” Dr. Rohack said.  “The benefits of this new care delivery model cannot be fully realized unless physicians in all practice sizes can be involved.”

The CEO of the Cleveland Clinic hates proposed federal rules for accountable care organizations, saying they create “significant barriers” and would discourage hospitals from adopting the new model of care.  Toby Cosgrove made the comments in an eight-page letter addressed to Donald Berwick, though Cosgrove stressed that the Clinic supports the concept of accountable care organizations (ACOs).

“Rather than providing a broad framework that focuses on results as the key criteria for success, the proposed rule is replete with (1) prescriptive requirements that have little to do with outcomes; and (2) many detailed governance and reporting requirements that create significant administrative burdens,” according to Cosgrove.

To be considered an ACO, organizations must agree to manage all of the health needs of a minimum of 5,000 Medicare beneficiaries for at least three years.  ACOs are appealing to hospitals because organizations that save Medicare money will be eligible to share in some of that savings themselves.  CMS is accepting public comments on its proposed ACO rules and will issue final rules later this year.  Like the Clinic, other leading hospitals have criticized the rules as being too burdensome and providing too little possibility of financial gain.

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Skeptical Federal Appellate Court Hears Arguments on the ACA

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

Attorneys representing 26 states – with Florida taking the lead – locked horns with the Obama administration in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).Florida, 25 other states and the National Federation of Independent Business claim that the “individual mandate” violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause by requiring that Americans buy healthcare insurance or pay a penalty.

Arguing for the Obama administration was acting Solicitor General, Neal Katyal, who said “People are seeking this good already in untold numbers.  The good of healthcare.  It’s purely financing.  It’s about failure to pay.  Not about failure to buy.”  Katyal pointed out that the 50 million Americans who currently lack healthcare insurance too often end up in emergency rooms for medical treatment, driving up costs.  Defending the law, Katyal emphasized the special nature of healthcare and the insurance market today.  He said billions of dollars incurred by people without insurance are passed on to people who carry insurance.  Arguing for the states, attorney Paul Clement conceded that the government can enact laws that people acquire healthcare insurance, but not until they need medical care.  Prior to that, “they’re not engaged in commerce.  They’re sitting in their living rooms,” Clement said.

The three-judge panel seemed to be skeptical about the government’s position. “I can’t find any case like this,” Chief Judge Joel Dubina said.  “If we uphold this, are there any limits” to the federal government’s power?  Judge Stanley Marcus said “I can’t find any case” in the past where the courts upheld “telling a private person they are compelled to purchase a product in the open market…Is there anything that suggests Congress can do this?”

So far, three federal district judges have upheld the ACA while two have ruled it is unconstitutional.  Three cases were heard by appeals courts, with a fourth appellate panel planning to hold a hearing in September.  The current case has attracted the most attention because it involves 26 state attorneys general who jointly challenged the law.  Additionally the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit is considered one of the nation’s most conservative federal appellate courts.

If any appeals courts declare the law unconstitutional, the case likely would be heard by the Supreme Court — perhaps during the election year.  Legal experts believe the 11th Circuit is more likely to rule against the administration.

The hearing was a government appeal of a decision by Florida-based U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson that ruled against the insurance mandate and voided the healthcare law.  According to Vinson, the mandate exceeded Congress’ power to regulate commerce because, instead of involving the usual “economic activity,” it targeted “inactivity,” in other words, someone’s decision not to purchase insurance.  This case is high profile because it was brought by more than half of the states; additionally, it tests an unprecedented lower-court ruling that invalidated the entire law.

One of the appellate judges asked Katyal if there are there any limits on Congress’s power to compel people to act. “Absolutely,” Katyal replied.  “We are not saying that Congress can force somebody to buy something and that failure to do so is economic activity.  People are seeking that good already,” he said.  Katyal said $43 billion is spent annually on care for the uninsured.  “That’s quintessentially economic,” he said.  Clement argued that the crux of the issue is whether the federal government can regulate individuals.  “For 220 years, Congress never saw fit to exercise that power,” he said.  “The whole reason we do this is to protect individual liberty.”  According to Clement, the Commerce Clause regulates people engaged in commercial activity and does not force them to engage.

Writing in The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn is reluctant to say how he thinks the court will rule.  “I didn’t hear the entire oral argument, which C-Span helpfully broadcast.  (Note to the federal judiciary: There’s this thing called the internet and it can transmit audio files.)  But I, too, came away genuinely uncertain how the court will rule.  The judges seemed a lot more ornery during the questioning of Katyal than they did during the questioning of Paul Clement, the former solicitor general arguing on behalf of the states filing the lawsuit.  But the actual substance of those questions – and some side comments that the judges made – suggested they were ready to reject essential pieces of the legal challenge.  Particularly striking were a series of comments from Frank Hull, in which she (yes, Frank is a ‘she’) stated repeatedly that she did not agree with the ‘activity-inactivity’ distinction opponents of the law have made.  As those of you following this case know, that’s really the heart of their argument:  They say the decision not to buy insurance is a form of ‘inactivity,’ which means the government may not regulate it.  Supporters of the law, including the government, disagree.  And Hull seemed to side with them, saying (roughly, given my sketchy notes):  ‘When I decide I would rather spend my money differently…that I would rather buy this product than pay for health insurance…that’s an economic decision…How can that be anything other than an economic decision?’”

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