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U.S. health care policy: What lies ahead?
The New Year brings new leadership in the United States, with President-elect Donald Trump taking office later this month. With a Republican-controlled Congress, party leaders have the opportunity to shape the nation’s policies around conservative ideals. This includes health care.
Since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010, Republicans have vowed to repeal and replace it. This could be their opportunity.
However, “there is no clear coalescence around specific policy reforms that would replace the Affordable Care Act,” says Christine Eibner, PhD, a senior economist at Rand and a professor at the Pardee Rand Graduate School.
As a candidate, Trump did little to advance policy ideas around health care. Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and others have, over the years, proposed reforms with which Trump may or may not agree.
“The Republicans now have a hard issue in their hands,” says Allison Hoffman, JD, professor of law at UCLA School of Law and an expert on health care law and policy. “It was hard before the Affordable Care Act, and it will be hard after. There is not an easy solution.”
By 2016, the ACA had expanded health coverage to 20 million people through Medicaid and private insurance on health care marketplaces. It extended the solvency of the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. It accelerated the pace of delivery system and payment reform through creation of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation.
The law, however, has not been without its challenges.
“It was a strong achievement to get 20 million people insured, but it’s not clear that it bent the cost curve,” says Dr. Eibner. “There are high premiums on the individual market and still 31 million people without coverage. There is still opportunity to improve.”
Where we stand January 2017
Whether the Republicans can or will repeal the ACA in its entirety and improve it remains unknown. But, the experts say, the landmark law has left its mark on the American health care system.
“Everyone is complaining about the uncertainty created by the election, but we have been dealing with a highly uncertain environment for many years,” says Ron Greeno, MD, FCCP, MHM, senior advisor for medical affairs at TeamHealth, chair of the SHM Public Policy Committee, and SHM president-elect. “There will be changes, but things were going to change no matter the outcome of the election. It continues to require tolerance for change and tolerance for uncertainty.”
In an analysis for the Commonwealth Fund, Dr. Eibner investigated the economic implications of aspects of Trump’s plans as a candidate. Using a computer model that incorporates economic theory and data to simulate the effects of health policy changes, Dr. Eibner found that Trump’s plans (full repeal alone or repeal with tax deductions for health care premiums, Medicaid block grants, or selling health insurance across state lines) would increase the number of uninsured people by 16 million to 25 million, disproportionately impact low-income and sicker patients, expose individual market enrollees to higher out-of-pocket costs, and increase the federal deficit by $0.5 billion to $41 billion.1 The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates full repeal could increase the federal deficit by $137 billion to $353 billion by 2025.2 Rep. Ryan’s plan, A Better Way, proposes providing people more control over their health care, giving tax credits instead of subsidies for premiums, capping the employer-sponsored health insurance tax exclusion, and expanding use of health savings accounts.3 However, Rep. Ryan’s plan “doesn’t reduce the cost of health care. It puts more onus on individuals, and their costs go up,” Ms. Hoffman says. “The weight of that will be more on people who have preexisting conditions.”
Joshua Lenchus, DO, RPh, FACP, SFHM, a member of SHM’s Public Policy Committee and hospitalist at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida, is no fan of entitlement programs like Medicaid but says, “The safety-net hospital where I work would rather have people covered with something than nothing.”
Dr. Lenchus is optimistic that economic reforms under Trump will lead to more jobs, increasing the number of people covered by employer plans. “The economy drives health care reform,” he says. “He has to up his ante now and show people that he can stimulate job growth in this country so we don’t have this middle class that is continuously squeezed.”
Dr. Greeno and Ms. Hoffman, who is also a faculty associate at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and vice chair of the Insurance Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, suggest hospitalists get involved as rules are being shaped and written.
“We want to help reform the delivery system, and we want it to be done right and to be done fairly. We want to have say in how our patients are treated,” Dr. Greeno says.
Key provisions: A delicate balance
Many people equate the ACA with the individual mandate, which requires nearly all Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a fine. The federal government provides subsidies to enrollees between 138% and 400% of the federal poverty level so their out-of-pocket costs never exceed a defined threshold even if premiums go up. These could be on the chopping block.
“The last bill Congress passed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which Obama vetoed, repealed the individual mandate and subsidies for people to buy insurance,” Ms. Hoffman says. “If they do repeal it, private insurance through the exchanges will crumble.”
Mr. Trump’s tax deductions to offset premium costs are based on income, making them more generous for higher-income earners than low-income ones, Hoffman adds.
As a result, she says, people may choose high-deductible plans and face high out-of-pocket costs if they do seek care.
“It’s asking individuals to save by deciding how they’re going to ration care, where someone says they’re not going to go to the doctor today or fill a prescription drug they need,” Ms. Hoffman says.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has said he would like to keep the provision of the ACA that bans insurers from denying individuals with preexisting conditions. This, experts agree, may not be possible if other parts of the law are repealed and not replaced with similar protections for insurers.
“If you try to keep the rules about not including preexisting conditions and get rid of subsidies and the individual mandate, it just won’t work,” Ms. Hoffman says. “You end up with extraordinarily expensive health insurance.”
Rep. Ryan’s plan would prohibit insurers from denying patients with preexisting conditions but only if patients maintain continuous coverage, with a single open-enrollment period. He has promised to provide at least $25 billion in federal funding for state high-risk pools.
Prior to the passage of the ACA, 35 states offered high-risk pools to people excluded from the individual market. The Kaiser Family Foundation shows the net annual losses in these states averaged $5,510 per enrollee in 2011. Premiums ranged from 100% to 200% higher than non–high-risk group coverage. Government subsidies to cover losses amounted to $1 billion in each state.4
Meanwhile, both Mr. Trump and Rep. Ryan have proposed profound changes for Medicaid. Dr. Greeno calls this a “massive political challenge” unless they can provide an alternative way to cover people who currently rely on the federal-state entitlement, as well as those who gained coverage through ACA expansion. Currently, 70 million people are enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.5 Through Mr. Trump’s suggested block grants, states would receive a fixed amount of money to administer their program with increased flexibility. Rep. Ryan’s plan calls for enrollment caps that would distribute a dollar amount to each participant in the program with no limit on the number of enrollees. Either would be adjusted for inflation.
States could implement work requirements for beneficiaries or ask them to pay a small amount toward their premiums. Expansion states could also lower the Medicaid threshold below 138%.
Some states will struggle to provide for all their enrollees, Ms. Hoffman says, particularly since health spending generally outpaces inflation. Dr. Lenchus is more optimistic. “I believe states that didn’t expand Medicaid, one way or another, will figure out a way to deal with that population,” he says.
And … Medicare
The other entitlement program facing abrupt change is Medicare, typically considered the third rail of American politics.
“This is the hot political moment,” Ms. Hoffman says. “This is the point where the Republicans think they can tick off their wish list. For many Republicans, this kind of entitlement program is the opposite of what they believe in.”
Though Mr. Trump has said before he would not alter Medicare, he remained quiet on this point in the aftermath of the election. Repealing the ACA would affect Medicare by potentially reopening the Part D prescription drug doughnut hole and eliminating some of the savings provisions in the law. In fact, the CBO estimates Medicare’s direct spending would increase $802 billion between 2016 and 2025.1 Rep. Ryan has talked about privatizing Medicare by offering seniors who rely on it vouchers to apply toward private insurance.
“At the highest level, it’s moving Medicare from a defined benefit to a defined contribution program,” Ms. Hoffman says. “It shifts financial risk from the federal government onto beneficiaries. If Medicare spending continues to grow faster than the rest of the economy, Medicare beneficiaries will pay more and more.”
Seniors may also find themselves rationing or skimping on care.
Despite Rep. Ryan’s statements to the contrary, Medicare is not broken because of the ACA, Ms. Hoffman says. Its solvency has been prolonged, and though the reasons are not clear, Medicare spending has slowed since the passage of the ACA.6
MACRA launch
Another key factor in the health care policy landscape is MACRA, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, which fundamentally shifts the way the government administrates and reimburses physicians for health care. MACRA begins in 2017. Dr. Greeno is concerned that changes to the ACA will impact the testing of payment models CMS is testing.
“There are hundreds of hospitals and thousands of physicians already invested in different models, so I don’t expect anybody has any desire to pull the rug from under physicians who are testing alternative payment models [APMs],” he says. “MACRA was passed on a strong bipartisan vote, and it created an APM track. Obviously, Congress intended APM models to continue to expand.”
Dr. Greeno says hospitalists are helping “shape these models,” working with the CMS and the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC) “to ensure physicians participate in APMs and feel engaged rather than being a worker in a model someone else controls.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump spoke of importing pharmaceuticals from overseas in an effort to control high prices. This policy is no longer part of his online plan. He also proposes allowing the sale of health insurance across state lines.
“It would be giving enrollees in states with stricter regulations the opportunity to circumvent to a looser state, which undermines the state with the stricter regulations,” Dr. Eibner says. “That would really create winners and losers. People who are healthy can buy a policy in a state with looser regulations, and their costs would likely fall. But someone sicker and older, it would be harder.”
Ms. Hoffman defines such a plan as a “race to the bottom.” Without well-established networks of physicians and hospitals, startup costs in new states are prohibitive, and many insurers may not wish to compete across state lines, she adds.
Repeal of the ACA could also limit some of the health benefits it required of plans on the individual market. For example, policymakers might be allowed to strip the contraceptive coverage regulation, which provides for free birth control.
“The reality is a lot of things changing in health care now were changing before the Affordable Care Act passed – PQRS, value-based purchasing, hospital-acquired infections,” Dr. Greeno says. “MACRA will continue the journey away from fee-for-service toward outcome-based models.”
At such a pivotal time, he strongly encourages hospitalists to join SHM if they are not already members and to get involved in SHM’s Grassroots Network.
“For a society of our age – young – and size, we’ve been tremendously impactful in helping with delivery system reform,” Dr. Greeno says. “I think it’s because we’re supporting change, not trying to stop it. We just want it to be intelligent change.”
He also is “convinced” hospitalists will be “critical to the redesign of the health care system. Since we are going to be taking care of the majority of hospitalized adult patients in hospitals, hospitalists want to have our say.”
Kelly April Tyrrell is a freelance writer in Madison, Wis.
References
1. Eibner C. Donald Trump’s health care reform proposals: Anticipated effects on insurance coverage, out-of-pocket costs, and the federal deficit. The Commonweath Fund website. Available at: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2016/sep/trump-presidential-health-care-proposal. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
2. Budgetary and economic effects of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Congressional Budget Office website. Available at: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/50252-Effects_of_ACA_Repeal.pdf. Accessed Nov. 15, 2016.
3. Our vision for a confident America. A Better Way website. Available at: http://abetterway.speaker.gov. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
4. Pollitz K. High-risk pools for uninsurable individuals. Kaiser Family Foundation website. Available at: http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/high-risk-pools-for-uninsurable-individuals/. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
5. How accessible is individual health insurance for consumers in less-than-ideal health? Kaiser Family Foundation website. Available at: https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/how-accessible-is-individual-health-insurance-for-consumer-in-less-than-perfect-health-report.pdf. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
6. The Affordable Care Act and Medicare. The Commonwealth Fund website. Available at: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2015/jun/medicare-affordable-care-act Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
The New Year brings new leadership in the United States, with President-elect Donald Trump taking office later this month. With a Republican-controlled Congress, party leaders have the opportunity to shape the nation’s policies around conservative ideals. This includes health care.
Since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010, Republicans have vowed to repeal and replace it. This could be their opportunity.
However, “there is no clear coalescence around specific policy reforms that would replace the Affordable Care Act,” says Christine Eibner, PhD, a senior economist at Rand and a professor at the Pardee Rand Graduate School.
As a candidate, Trump did little to advance policy ideas around health care. Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and others have, over the years, proposed reforms with which Trump may or may not agree.
“The Republicans now have a hard issue in their hands,” says Allison Hoffman, JD, professor of law at UCLA School of Law and an expert on health care law and policy. “It was hard before the Affordable Care Act, and it will be hard after. There is not an easy solution.”
By 2016, the ACA had expanded health coverage to 20 million people through Medicaid and private insurance on health care marketplaces. It extended the solvency of the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. It accelerated the pace of delivery system and payment reform through creation of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation.
The law, however, has not been without its challenges.
“It was a strong achievement to get 20 million people insured, but it’s not clear that it bent the cost curve,” says Dr. Eibner. “There are high premiums on the individual market and still 31 million people without coverage. There is still opportunity to improve.”
Where we stand January 2017
Whether the Republicans can or will repeal the ACA in its entirety and improve it remains unknown. But, the experts say, the landmark law has left its mark on the American health care system.
“Everyone is complaining about the uncertainty created by the election, but we have been dealing with a highly uncertain environment for many years,” says Ron Greeno, MD, FCCP, MHM, senior advisor for medical affairs at TeamHealth, chair of the SHM Public Policy Committee, and SHM president-elect. “There will be changes, but things were going to change no matter the outcome of the election. It continues to require tolerance for change and tolerance for uncertainty.”
In an analysis for the Commonwealth Fund, Dr. Eibner investigated the economic implications of aspects of Trump’s plans as a candidate. Using a computer model that incorporates economic theory and data to simulate the effects of health policy changes, Dr. Eibner found that Trump’s plans (full repeal alone or repeal with tax deductions for health care premiums, Medicaid block grants, or selling health insurance across state lines) would increase the number of uninsured people by 16 million to 25 million, disproportionately impact low-income and sicker patients, expose individual market enrollees to higher out-of-pocket costs, and increase the federal deficit by $0.5 billion to $41 billion.1 The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates full repeal could increase the federal deficit by $137 billion to $353 billion by 2025.2 Rep. Ryan’s plan, A Better Way, proposes providing people more control over their health care, giving tax credits instead of subsidies for premiums, capping the employer-sponsored health insurance tax exclusion, and expanding use of health savings accounts.3 However, Rep. Ryan’s plan “doesn’t reduce the cost of health care. It puts more onus on individuals, and their costs go up,” Ms. Hoffman says. “The weight of that will be more on people who have preexisting conditions.”
Joshua Lenchus, DO, RPh, FACP, SFHM, a member of SHM’s Public Policy Committee and hospitalist at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida, is no fan of entitlement programs like Medicaid but says, “The safety-net hospital where I work would rather have people covered with something than nothing.”
Dr. Lenchus is optimistic that economic reforms under Trump will lead to more jobs, increasing the number of people covered by employer plans. “The economy drives health care reform,” he says. “He has to up his ante now and show people that he can stimulate job growth in this country so we don’t have this middle class that is continuously squeezed.”
Dr. Greeno and Ms. Hoffman, who is also a faculty associate at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and vice chair of the Insurance Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, suggest hospitalists get involved as rules are being shaped and written.
“We want to help reform the delivery system, and we want it to be done right and to be done fairly. We want to have say in how our patients are treated,” Dr. Greeno says.
Key provisions: A delicate balance
Many people equate the ACA with the individual mandate, which requires nearly all Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a fine. The federal government provides subsidies to enrollees between 138% and 400% of the federal poverty level so their out-of-pocket costs never exceed a defined threshold even if premiums go up. These could be on the chopping block.
“The last bill Congress passed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which Obama vetoed, repealed the individual mandate and subsidies for people to buy insurance,” Ms. Hoffman says. “If they do repeal it, private insurance through the exchanges will crumble.”
Mr. Trump’s tax deductions to offset premium costs are based on income, making them more generous for higher-income earners than low-income ones, Hoffman adds.
As a result, she says, people may choose high-deductible plans and face high out-of-pocket costs if they do seek care.
“It’s asking individuals to save by deciding how they’re going to ration care, where someone says they’re not going to go to the doctor today or fill a prescription drug they need,” Ms. Hoffman says.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has said he would like to keep the provision of the ACA that bans insurers from denying individuals with preexisting conditions. This, experts agree, may not be possible if other parts of the law are repealed and not replaced with similar protections for insurers.
“If you try to keep the rules about not including preexisting conditions and get rid of subsidies and the individual mandate, it just won’t work,” Ms. Hoffman says. “You end up with extraordinarily expensive health insurance.”
Rep. Ryan’s plan would prohibit insurers from denying patients with preexisting conditions but only if patients maintain continuous coverage, with a single open-enrollment period. He has promised to provide at least $25 billion in federal funding for state high-risk pools.
Prior to the passage of the ACA, 35 states offered high-risk pools to people excluded from the individual market. The Kaiser Family Foundation shows the net annual losses in these states averaged $5,510 per enrollee in 2011. Premiums ranged from 100% to 200% higher than non–high-risk group coverage. Government subsidies to cover losses amounted to $1 billion in each state.4
Meanwhile, both Mr. Trump and Rep. Ryan have proposed profound changes for Medicaid. Dr. Greeno calls this a “massive political challenge” unless they can provide an alternative way to cover people who currently rely on the federal-state entitlement, as well as those who gained coverage through ACA expansion. Currently, 70 million people are enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.5 Through Mr. Trump’s suggested block grants, states would receive a fixed amount of money to administer their program with increased flexibility. Rep. Ryan’s plan calls for enrollment caps that would distribute a dollar amount to each participant in the program with no limit on the number of enrollees. Either would be adjusted for inflation.
States could implement work requirements for beneficiaries or ask them to pay a small amount toward their premiums. Expansion states could also lower the Medicaid threshold below 138%.
Some states will struggle to provide for all their enrollees, Ms. Hoffman says, particularly since health spending generally outpaces inflation. Dr. Lenchus is more optimistic. “I believe states that didn’t expand Medicaid, one way or another, will figure out a way to deal with that population,” he says.
And … Medicare
The other entitlement program facing abrupt change is Medicare, typically considered the third rail of American politics.
“This is the hot political moment,” Ms. Hoffman says. “This is the point where the Republicans think they can tick off their wish list. For many Republicans, this kind of entitlement program is the opposite of what they believe in.”
Though Mr. Trump has said before he would not alter Medicare, he remained quiet on this point in the aftermath of the election. Repealing the ACA would affect Medicare by potentially reopening the Part D prescription drug doughnut hole and eliminating some of the savings provisions in the law. In fact, the CBO estimates Medicare’s direct spending would increase $802 billion between 2016 and 2025.1 Rep. Ryan has talked about privatizing Medicare by offering seniors who rely on it vouchers to apply toward private insurance.
“At the highest level, it’s moving Medicare from a defined benefit to a defined contribution program,” Ms. Hoffman says. “It shifts financial risk from the federal government onto beneficiaries. If Medicare spending continues to grow faster than the rest of the economy, Medicare beneficiaries will pay more and more.”
Seniors may also find themselves rationing or skimping on care.
Despite Rep. Ryan’s statements to the contrary, Medicare is not broken because of the ACA, Ms. Hoffman says. Its solvency has been prolonged, and though the reasons are not clear, Medicare spending has slowed since the passage of the ACA.6
MACRA launch
Another key factor in the health care policy landscape is MACRA, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, which fundamentally shifts the way the government administrates and reimburses physicians for health care. MACRA begins in 2017. Dr. Greeno is concerned that changes to the ACA will impact the testing of payment models CMS is testing.
“There are hundreds of hospitals and thousands of physicians already invested in different models, so I don’t expect anybody has any desire to pull the rug from under physicians who are testing alternative payment models [APMs],” he says. “MACRA was passed on a strong bipartisan vote, and it created an APM track. Obviously, Congress intended APM models to continue to expand.”
Dr. Greeno says hospitalists are helping “shape these models,” working with the CMS and the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC) “to ensure physicians participate in APMs and feel engaged rather than being a worker in a model someone else controls.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump spoke of importing pharmaceuticals from overseas in an effort to control high prices. This policy is no longer part of his online plan. He also proposes allowing the sale of health insurance across state lines.
“It would be giving enrollees in states with stricter regulations the opportunity to circumvent to a looser state, which undermines the state with the stricter regulations,” Dr. Eibner says. “That would really create winners and losers. People who are healthy can buy a policy in a state with looser regulations, and their costs would likely fall. But someone sicker and older, it would be harder.”
Ms. Hoffman defines such a plan as a “race to the bottom.” Without well-established networks of physicians and hospitals, startup costs in new states are prohibitive, and many insurers may not wish to compete across state lines, she adds.
Repeal of the ACA could also limit some of the health benefits it required of plans on the individual market. For example, policymakers might be allowed to strip the contraceptive coverage regulation, which provides for free birth control.
“The reality is a lot of things changing in health care now were changing before the Affordable Care Act passed – PQRS, value-based purchasing, hospital-acquired infections,” Dr. Greeno says. “MACRA will continue the journey away from fee-for-service toward outcome-based models.”
At such a pivotal time, he strongly encourages hospitalists to join SHM if they are not already members and to get involved in SHM’s Grassroots Network.
“For a society of our age – young – and size, we’ve been tremendously impactful in helping with delivery system reform,” Dr. Greeno says. “I think it’s because we’re supporting change, not trying to stop it. We just want it to be intelligent change.”
He also is “convinced” hospitalists will be “critical to the redesign of the health care system. Since we are going to be taking care of the majority of hospitalized adult patients in hospitals, hospitalists want to have our say.”
Kelly April Tyrrell is a freelance writer in Madison, Wis.
References
1. Eibner C. Donald Trump’s health care reform proposals: Anticipated effects on insurance coverage, out-of-pocket costs, and the federal deficit. The Commonweath Fund website. Available at: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2016/sep/trump-presidential-health-care-proposal. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
2. Budgetary and economic effects of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Congressional Budget Office website. Available at: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/50252-Effects_of_ACA_Repeal.pdf. Accessed Nov. 15, 2016.
3. Our vision for a confident America. A Better Way website. Available at: http://abetterway.speaker.gov. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
4. Pollitz K. High-risk pools for uninsurable individuals. Kaiser Family Foundation website. Available at: http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/high-risk-pools-for-uninsurable-individuals/. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
5. How accessible is individual health insurance for consumers in less-than-ideal health? Kaiser Family Foundation website. Available at: https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/how-accessible-is-individual-health-insurance-for-consumer-in-less-than-perfect-health-report.pdf. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
6. The Affordable Care Act and Medicare. The Commonwealth Fund website. Available at: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2015/jun/medicare-affordable-care-act Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
The New Year brings new leadership in the United States, with President-elect Donald Trump taking office later this month. With a Republican-controlled Congress, party leaders have the opportunity to shape the nation’s policies around conservative ideals. This includes health care.
Since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010, Republicans have vowed to repeal and replace it. This could be their opportunity.
However, “there is no clear coalescence around specific policy reforms that would replace the Affordable Care Act,” says Christine Eibner, PhD, a senior economist at Rand and a professor at the Pardee Rand Graduate School.
As a candidate, Trump did little to advance policy ideas around health care. Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and others have, over the years, proposed reforms with which Trump may or may not agree.
“The Republicans now have a hard issue in their hands,” says Allison Hoffman, JD, professor of law at UCLA School of Law and an expert on health care law and policy. “It was hard before the Affordable Care Act, and it will be hard after. There is not an easy solution.”
By 2016, the ACA had expanded health coverage to 20 million people through Medicaid and private insurance on health care marketplaces. It extended the solvency of the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. It accelerated the pace of delivery system and payment reform through creation of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation.
The law, however, has not been without its challenges.
“It was a strong achievement to get 20 million people insured, but it’s not clear that it bent the cost curve,” says Dr. Eibner. “There are high premiums on the individual market and still 31 million people without coverage. There is still opportunity to improve.”
Where we stand January 2017
Whether the Republicans can or will repeal the ACA in its entirety and improve it remains unknown. But, the experts say, the landmark law has left its mark on the American health care system.
“Everyone is complaining about the uncertainty created by the election, but we have been dealing with a highly uncertain environment for many years,” says Ron Greeno, MD, FCCP, MHM, senior advisor for medical affairs at TeamHealth, chair of the SHM Public Policy Committee, and SHM president-elect. “There will be changes, but things were going to change no matter the outcome of the election. It continues to require tolerance for change and tolerance for uncertainty.”
In an analysis for the Commonwealth Fund, Dr. Eibner investigated the economic implications of aspects of Trump’s plans as a candidate. Using a computer model that incorporates economic theory and data to simulate the effects of health policy changes, Dr. Eibner found that Trump’s plans (full repeal alone or repeal with tax deductions for health care premiums, Medicaid block grants, or selling health insurance across state lines) would increase the number of uninsured people by 16 million to 25 million, disproportionately impact low-income and sicker patients, expose individual market enrollees to higher out-of-pocket costs, and increase the federal deficit by $0.5 billion to $41 billion.1 The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates full repeal could increase the federal deficit by $137 billion to $353 billion by 2025.2 Rep. Ryan’s plan, A Better Way, proposes providing people more control over their health care, giving tax credits instead of subsidies for premiums, capping the employer-sponsored health insurance tax exclusion, and expanding use of health savings accounts.3 However, Rep. Ryan’s plan “doesn’t reduce the cost of health care. It puts more onus on individuals, and their costs go up,” Ms. Hoffman says. “The weight of that will be more on people who have preexisting conditions.”
Joshua Lenchus, DO, RPh, FACP, SFHM, a member of SHM’s Public Policy Committee and hospitalist at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida, is no fan of entitlement programs like Medicaid but says, “The safety-net hospital where I work would rather have people covered with something than nothing.”
Dr. Lenchus is optimistic that economic reforms under Trump will lead to more jobs, increasing the number of people covered by employer plans. “The economy drives health care reform,” he says. “He has to up his ante now and show people that he can stimulate job growth in this country so we don’t have this middle class that is continuously squeezed.”
Dr. Greeno and Ms. Hoffman, who is also a faculty associate at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and vice chair of the Insurance Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, suggest hospitalists get involved as rules are being shaped and written.
“We want to help reform the delivery system, and we want it to be done right and to be done fairly. We want to have say in how our patients are treated,” Dr. Greeno says.
Key provisions: A delicate balance
Many people equate the ACA with the individual mandate, which requires nearly all Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a fine. The federal government provides subsidies to enrollees between 138% and 400% of the federal poverty level so their out-of-pocket costs never exceed a defined threshold even if premiums go up. These could be on the chopping block.
“The last bill Congress passed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which Obama vetoed, repealed the individual mandate and subsidies for people to buy insurance,” Ms. Hoffman says. “If they do repeal it, private insurance through the exchanges will crumble.”
Mr. Trump’s tax deductions to offset premium costs are based on income, making them more generous for higher-income earners than low-income ones, Hoffman adds.
As a result, she says, people may choose high-deductible plans and face high out-of-pocket costs if they do seek care.
“It’s asking individuals to save by deciding how they’re going to ration care, where someone says they’re not going to go to the doctor today or fill a prescription drug they need,” Ms. Hoffman says.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has said he would like to keep the provision of the ACA that bans insurers from denying individuals with preexisting conditions. This, experts agree, may not be possible if other parts of the law are repealed and not replaced with similar protections for insurers.
“If you try to keep the rules about not including preexisting conditions and get rid of subsidies and the individual mandate, it just won’t work,” Ms. Hoffman says. “You end up with extraordinarily expensive health insurance.”
Rep. Ryan’s plan would prohibit insurers from denying patients with preexisting conditions but only if patients maintain continuous coverage, with a single open-enrollment period. He has promised to provide at least $25 billion in federal funding for state high-risk pools.
Prior to the passage of the ACA, 35 states offered high-risk pools to people excluded from the individual market. The Kaiser Family Foundation shows the net annual losses in these states averaged $5,510 per enrollee in 2011. Premiums ranged from 100% to 200% higher than non–high-risk group coverage. Government subsidies to cover losses amounted to $1 billion in each state.4
Meanwhile, both Mr. Trump and Rep. Ryan have proposed profound changes for Medicaid. Dr. Greeno calls this a “massive political challenge” unless they can provide an alternative way to cover people who currently rely on the federal-state entitlement, as well as those who gained coverage through ACA expansion. Currently, 70 million people are enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.5 Through Mr. Trump’s suggested block grants, states would receive a fixed amount of money to administer their program with increased flexibility. Rep. Ryan’s plan calls for enrollment caps that would distribute a dollar amount to each participant in the program with no limit on the number of enrollees. Either would be adjusted for inflation.
States could implement work requirements for beneficiaries or ask them to pay a small amount toward their premiums. Expansion states could also lower the Medicaid threshold below 138%.
Some states will struggle to provide for all their enrollees, Ms. Hoffman says, particularly since health spending generally outpaces inflation. Dr. Lenchus is more optimistic. “I believe states that didn’t expand Medicaid, one way or another, will figure out a way to deal with that population,” he says.
And … Medicare
The other entitlement program facing abrupt change is Medicare, typically considered the third rail of American politics.
“This is the hot political moment,” Ms. Hoffman says. “This is the point where the Republicans think they can tick off their wish list. For many Republicans, this kind of entitlement program is the opposite of what they believe in.”
Though Mr. Trump has said before he would not alter Medicare, he remained quiet on this point in the aftermath of the election. Repealing the ACA would affect Medicare by potentially reopening the Part D prescription drug doughnut hole and eliminating some of the savings provisions in the law. In fact, the CBO estimates Medicare’s direct spending would increase $802 billion between 2016 and 2025.1 Rep. Ryan has talked about privatizing Medicare by offering seniors who rely on it vouchers to apply toward private insurance.
“At the highest level, it’s moving Medicare from a defined benefit to a defined contribution program,” Ms. Hoffman says. “It shifts financial risk from the federal government onto beneficiaries. If Medicare spending continues to grow faster than the rest of the economy, Medicare beneficiaries will pay more and more.”
Seniors may also find themselves rationing or skimping on care.
Despite Rep. Ryan’s statements to the contrary, Medicare is not broken because of the ACA, Ms. Hoffman says. Its solvency has been prolonged, and though the reasons are not clear, Medicare spending has slowed since the passage of the ACA.6
MACRA launch
Another key factor in the health care policy landscape is MACRA, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, which fundamentally shifts the way the government administrates and reimburses physicians for health care. MACRA begins in 2017. Dr. Greeno is concerned that changes to the ACA will impact the testing of payment models CMS is testing.
“There are hundreds of hospitals and thousands of physicians already invested in different models, so I don’t expect anybody has any desire to pull the rug from under physicians who are testing alternative payment models [APMs],” he says. “MACRA was passed on a strong bipartisan vote, and it created an APM track. Obviously, Congress intended APM models to continue to expand.”
Dr. Greeno says hospitalists are helping “shape these models,” working with the CMS and the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC) “to ensure physicians participate in APMs and feel engaged rather than being a worker in a model someone else controls.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump spoke of importing pharmaceuticals from overseas in an effort to control high prices. This policy is no longer part of his online plan. He also proposes allowing the sale of health insurance across state lines.
“It would be giving enrollees in states with stricter regulations the opportunity to circumvent to a looser state, which undermines the state with the stricter regulations,” Dr. Eibner says. “That would really create winners and losers. People who are healthy can buy a policy in a state with looser regulations, and their costs would likely fall. But someone sicker and older, it would be harder.”
Ms. Hoffman defines such a plan as a “race to the bottom.” Without well-established networks of physicians and hospitals, startup costs in new states are prohibitive, and many insurers may not wish to compete across state lines, she adds.
Repeal of the ACA could also limit some of the health benefits it required of plans on the individual market. For example, policymakers might be allowed to strip the contraceptive coverage regulation, which provides for free birth control.
“The reality is a lot of things changing in health care now were changing before the Affordable Care Act passed – PQRS, value-based purchasing, hospital-acquired infections,” Dr. Greeno says. “MACRA will continue the journey away from fee-for-service toward outcome-based models.”
At such a pivotal time, he strongly encourages hospitalists to join SHM if they are not already members and to get involved in SHM’s Grassroots Network.
“For a society of our age – young – and size, we’ve been tremendously impactful in helping with delivery system reform,” Dr. Greeno says. “I think it’s because we’re supporting change, not trying to stop it. We just want it to be intelligent change.”
He also is “convinced” hospitalists will be “critical to the redesign of the health care system. Since we are going to be taking care of the majority of hospitalized adult patients in hospitals, hospitalists want to have our say.”
Kelly April Tyrrell is a freelance writer in Madison, Wis.
References
1. Eibner C. Donald Trump’s health care reform proposals: Anticipated effects on insurance coverage, out-of-pocket costs, and the federal deficit. The Commonweath Fund website. Available at: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2016/sep/trump-presidential-health-care-proposal. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
2. Budgetary and economic effects of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Congressional Budget Office website. Available at: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/50252-Effects_of_ACA_Repeal.pdf. Accessed Nov. 15, 2016.
3. Our vision for a confident America. A Better Way website. Available at: http://abetterway.speaker.gov. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
4. Pollitz K. High-risk pools for uninsurable individuals. Kaiser Family Foundation website. Available at: http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/high-risk-pools-for-uninsurable-individuals/. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
5. How accessible is individual health insurance for consumers in less-than-ideal health? Kaiser Family Foundation website. Available at: https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/how-accessible-is-individual-health-insurance-for-consumer-in-less-than-perfect-health-report.pdf. Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
6. The Affordable Care Act and Medicare. The Commonwealth Fund website. Available at: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2015/jun/medicare-affordable-care-act Accessed Nov. 17, 2016.
Embrace change as a hospitalist leader
We work in complex environments and in a flawed and rapidly changing health care system. Caregivers, patients, and communities will be led through this complexity by those who embrace change. Last October, I had the privilege of attending and facilitating the SHM Leadership Academy in Orlando, which allowed me the opportunity to meet a group of people who embrace change, including the benefits and challenges that often accompany it.
SHM board member Jeff Glasheen, MD, SFHM, taught one of the first lessons at Leadership Academy, focusing on the importance of meaningful, difficult change. With comparisons to companies that have embraced change, like Apple, and some that have not, like Sears, Jeff summed up how complacency with “good” and a reluctance to tackle the difficulty of change keeps organizations – and people – from becoming great.
“Good is the enemy of great,” Jeff preached.
He largely focused on hospitalists leading organizational change, but the concepts can apply to personal change, too. He explained that “people generally want things to be different, but they don’t want to change.”
Leaders in training
Ten emerging hospitalist leaders sat at my table, soaking in the message. Several of them, like me 8 years ago, had the responsibilities of leadership unexpectedly thrust upon them. Some carried with them the heavy expectations of their colleagues or hospital administration (or both) that by being elevated into a role such as medical director, they would abruptly be able to make improvements in patient care and hospital operations. They had accepted the challenge to change – to move out of purely clinical roles and take on new ones in leadership despite having little or no experience. Doing so, they gingerly but willingly were following in the footsteps of leaders before them, growing their skills, improving their hospitals, and laying a path for future leaders to follow.
A few weeks prior, I had taken a new leadership position myself. The Cleveland Clinic recently acquired a hospital and health system in Akron, Ohio, about 40 miles away from the city. I assumed the role of president of this acquisition, embracing the complex challenge of leading the process of integrating two health systems. After 3 years overseeing a different hospital in the health system, I finally felt I had developed the people, processes, and culture that I had been striving to build. But like the young leaders at Leadership Academy, I had the opportunity to change, grow, develop, take on new risk, and become a stronger leader in this new role. A significant part of the experience of the Leadership Academy involves table exercises. For the first few exercises, the group was quiet, uncertain, tentative. I was struck both by how early these individuals were in their development and by how so much of what is happening today in hospitals and health care is dependent upon the development and success of individuals like these who are enthusiastic and talented but young and overwhelmed.
I believe that successful hospitalists are, through experience, training, and nature, rapid assimilators into their environments. By the third day, the dynamic at my table had gone from tentative and uncertain to much more confident and assertive. To experience this transformation in person at SHM’s Leadership Academy, we welcome you to Scottsdale, Ariz., later this year. Learn more about the program at www.shmleadershipacademy.org.
At Leadership Academy and beyond, I implore hospitalists to look for opportunities to change during this time of New Year’s resolutions and to take the opposite posture and want to change – change how we think, act, and respond; change our roles to take on new, uncomfortable responsibilities; and change how we view change itself.
We will be better for it both personally and professionally, and we will stand out as role models for our colleagues, coworkers, and hospitalists who follow in our footsteps.
Dr. Harte is a practicing hospitalist, president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, and president of Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, part of the Cleveland Clinic Health System. He is associate professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, Lerner College of Medicine in Cleveland.
We work in complex environments and in a flawed and rapidly changing health care system. Caregivers, patients, and communities will be led through this complexity by those who embrace change. Last October, I had the privilege of attending and facilitating the SHM Leadership Academy in Orlando, which allowed me the opportunity to meet a group of people who embrace change, including the benefits and challenges that often accompany it.
SHM board member Jeff Glasheen, MD, SFHM, taught one of the first lessons at Leadership Academy, focusing on the importance of meaningful, difficult change. With comparisons to companies that have embraced change, like Apple, and some that have not, like Sears, Jeff summed up how complacency with “good” and a reluctance to tackle the difficulty of change keeps organizations – and people – from becoming great.
“Good is the enemy of great,” Jeff preached.
He largely focused on hospitalists leading organizational change, but the concepts can apply to personal change, too. He explained that “people generally want things to be different, but they don’t want to change.”
Leaders in training
Ten emerging hospitalist leaders sat at my table, soaking in the message. Several of them, like me 8 years ago, had the responsibilities of leadership unexpectedly thrust upon them. Some carried with them the heavy expectations of their colleagues or hospital administration (or both) that by being elevated into a role such as medical director, they would abruptly be able to make improvements in patient care and hospital operations. They had accepted the challenge to change – to move out of purely clinical roles and take on new ones in leadership despite having little or no experience. Doing so, they gingerly but willingly were following in the footsteps of leaders before them, growing their skills, improving their hospitals, and laying a path for future leaders to follow.
A few weeks prior, I had taken a new leadership position myself. The Cleveland Clinic recently acquired a hospital and health system in Akron, Ohio, about 40 miles away from the city. I assumed the role of president of this acquisition, embracing the complex challenge of leading the process of integrating two health systems. After 3 years overseeing a different hospital in the health system, I finally felt I had developed the people, processes, and culture that I had been striving to build. But like the young leaders at Leadership Academy, I had the opportunity to change, grow, develop, take on new risk, and become a stronger leader in this new role. A significant part of the experience of the Leadership Academy involves table exercises. For the first few exercises, the group was quiet, uncertain, tentative. I was struck both by how early these individuals were in their development and by how so much of what is happening today in hospitals and health care is dependent upon the development and success of individuals like these who are enthusiastic and talented but young and overwhelmed.
I believe that successful hospitalists are, through experience, training, and nature, rapid assimilators into their environments. By the third day, the dynamic at my table had gone from tentative and uncertain to much more confident and assertive. To experience this transformation in person at SHM’s Leadership Academy, we welcome you to Scottsdale, Ariz., later this year. Learn more about the program at www.shmleadershipacademy.org.
At Leadership Academy and beyond, I implore hospitalists to look for opportunities to change during this time of New Year’s resolutions and to take the opposite posture and want to change – change how we think, act, and respond; change our roles to take on new, uncomfortable responsibilities; and change how we view change itself.
We will be better for it both personally and professionally, and we will stand out as role models for our colleagues, coworkers, and hospitalists who follow in our footsteps.
Dr. Harte is a practicing hospitalist, president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, and president of Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, part of the Cleveland Clinic Health System. He is associate professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, Lerner College of Medicine in Cleveland.
We work in complex environments and in a flawed and rapidly changing health care system. Caregivers, patients, and communities will be led through this complexity by those who embrace change. Last October, I had the privilege of attending and facilitating the SHM Leadership Academy in Orlando, which allowed me the opportunity to meet a group of people who embrace change, including the benefits and challenges that often accompany it.
SHM board member Jeff Glasheen, MD, SFHM, taught one of the first lessons at Leadership Academy, focusing on the importance of meaningful, difficult change. With comparisons to companies that have embraced change, like Apple, and some that have not, like Sears, Jeff summed up how complacency with “good” and a reluctance to tackle the difficulty of change keeps organizations – and people – from becoming great.
“Good is the enemy of great,” Jeff preached.
He largely focused on hospitalists leading organizational change, but the concepts can apply to personal change, too. He explained that “people generally want things to be different, but they don’t want to change.”
Leaders in training
Ten emerging hospitalist leaders sat at my table, soaking in the message. Several of them, like me 8 years ago, had the responsibilities of leadership unexpectedly thrust upon them. Some carried with them the heavy expectations of their colleagues or hospital administration (or both) that by being elevated into a role such as medical director, they would abruptly be able to make improvements in patient care and hospital operations. They had accepted the challenge to change – to move out of purely clinical roles and take on new ones in leadership despite having little or no experience. Doing so, they gingerly but willingly were following in the footsteps of leaders before them, growing their skills, improving their hospitals, and laying a path for future leaders to follow.
A few weeks prior, I had taken a new leadership position myself. The Cleveland Clinic recently acquired a hospital and health system in Akron, Ohio, about 40 miles away from the city. I assumed the role of president of this acquisition, embracing the complex challenge of leading the process of integrating two health systems. After 3 years overseeing a different hospital in the health system, I finally felt I had developed the people, processes, and culture that I had been striving to build. But like the young leaders at Leadership Academy, I had the opportunity to change, grow, develop, take on new risk, and become a stronger leader in this new role. A significant part of the experience of the Leadership Academy involves table exercises. For the first few exercises, the group was quiet, uncertain, tentative. I was struck both by how early these individuals were in their development and by how so much of what is happening today in hospitals and health care is dependent upon the development and success of individuals like these who are enthusiastic and talented but young and overwhelmed.
I believe that successful hospitalists are, through experience, training, and nature, rapid assimilators into their environments. By the third day, the dynamic at my table had gone from tentative and uncertain to much more confident and assertive. To experience this transformation in person at SHM’s Leadership Academy, we welcome you to Scottsdale, Ariz., later this year. Learn more about the program at www.shmleadershipacademy.org.
At Leadership Academy and beyond, I implore hospitalists to look for opportunities to change during this time of New Year’s resolutions and to take the opposite posture and want to change – change how we think, act, and respond; change our roles to take on new, uncomfortable responsibilities; and change how we view change itself.
We will be better for it both personally and professionally, and we will stand out as role models for our colleagues, coworkers, and hospitalists who follow in our footsteps.
Dr. Harte is a practicing hospitalist, president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, and president of Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, part of the Cleveland Clinic Health System. He is associate professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, Lerner College of Medicine in Cleveland.
Republicans Envision Their Healthcare Plan for the Future
On November 8, 2016, the fate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was all but sealed.
In a sweep of the legislative branch, Republicans maintained majorities in the House and Senate, and Donald Trump became the 45th president, running on the popular Republican refrain to “repeal and replace Obamacare.”
“Now, the real onus is going to be on them if they do move to repeal it in its entirety,” says Joshua Lenchus, DO, RPh, FACP, SFHM, a hospitalist at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida and a member of SHM’s Public Policy Committee. “It’s going to be a real burden to replace it with something meaningful and not something that’s recycled from six or eight years ago when the conversation first started.”
In the days following the election, President-elect Trump appeared to be backing off his campaign promises to repeal President Barack Obama’s landmark health reform law, acknowledging that at least some of its provisions should remain intact, including maintaining the ban on insurance companies denying coverage based on preexisting conditions and allowing dependent children to remain on their parents’ health insurance until age 26.
These ideas are also part of House Majority Leader Paul Ryan’s healthcare plan, called A Better Way. However, at least on the campaign trail, Trump and GOP leaders like Rep. Ryan did not see eye-to-eye on all aspects of health reform, including how to deal with Medicare and on issues of pharmaceutical regulation, leaving uncertainty over which platforms will be adopted.
What Comes Next?
“There is a lot of rhetoric out there and a lot of promises to replace the Affordable Care Act, which clearly is an important objective for Republicans, but as sort of a consolation, as [health economist] Stuart Altman used to say before the Affordable Care Act was passed, ‘Everybody’s number-one choice is universal health reform the way they want it, and the second is the status quo,’” says Sherry Glied, MA, PhD, health policy expert and dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
But the status quo is no longer an option. Passage of the ACA was driven by high healthcare costs in the U.S. and, in part, around access to coverage. Healthcare spending slowed after passage of the ACA, and while it cannot be fully attributed to the law, cost remains an issue.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that repeal of the ACA would increase the federal deficit by $137 billion to $353 billion between 2016 and 2025, growing even more after 2025.1 And without a mechanism to cover the 20 million people who have gained coverage through Medicaid expansion and private insurance coverage on state exchanges, scores of people could rejoin the ranks of the uninsured.
A Series of Small Cuts
“Whatever system replaces it, don’t expect in Trump’s first week in office Congress will hand him a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. They’ve tried to do that a number of times in the past, and what they’ve come up with has been a little lackluster. And that’s being generous,” says Dr. Lenchus, who overall supports President-elect Trump’s economic plans and is optimistic about what they could mean for health reform.
Most likely, the ACA will not be repealed in “one fell swoop,” says Glied, who also served under President Obama in the Department of Health and Human Services from 2010 to 2012 and was a senior economist for health care and labor market policy under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Rather, lawmakers are likely faced with having to “demolish it through a series of small cuts.”
What that will look like remains unknown. To fully repeal the ACA, Republicans would need 60 filibuster-proof votes in the Senate. However, Republicans have just 51 seats to the Democrats’ 45 after the GOP lost two seats in the November election.
House Republicans can push through a bill using a legislative maneuver called reconciliation, but it requires a majority vote in both chambers and would be restricted to changes that have an impact on the federal budget. At a minimum, Republicans would need a budget before they could attempt this strategy.
They achieved this in late 2015, drafting a bill (H.R. 3762) that would have eliminated Medicaid expansion and the subsidies that currently help 83% of enrollees on the ACA exchange afford their premiums. President Obama vetoed the bill; President-elect Trump is unlikely to do the same.
However, he and Republican party leaders must first come to agreement over what their version of health reform should look like. In general, Republicans have called for a healthcare system rooted in the free market, with more individual responsibility, less regulation, and more flexibility.
For instance, Rep. Ryan’s planwould restrict insurers from denying patients with preexisting conditions but only if individuals maintain continuous coverage, with a one-time open-enrollment opportunity.
Campaign Promises Versus President-Elect Promises
While campaigning, President-elect Trump proposed a seven-point plan that included lifting restrictions on tax-free health savings accounts, providing tax deductions for health insurance premiums, allowing the sale of health insurance across state lines, requiring physicians and hospitals to be transparent about pricing, and eliminating the individual mandate to purchase health insurance. He also proposed converting Medicaid into block grants to states and vowed not to change Medicare.
As president-elect, he has pledged, with few details, to challenge abortion access, further research and development, provide “flexibility” to Medicaid, “modernize” Medicare, and reestablish high-risk pools for sick patients with traditionally high premiums. 1 The ACA does not currently allow insurers to charge sick patients higher rates than healthy ones.
While block grants are one option for attempting to control costs in Medicaid by providing states a fixed sum to administer the entitlement program, Rep. Ryan’s plan calls for another option: per-capita limits on enrollees on Medicaid. He has not detailed what those limits would be. What will happen in states that expanded Medicaid through the ACA relative to those that did not is also unknown.
“Frankly, I think that what this election showed is a complete disdain for the general establishment,” says Dr. Lenchus. “If they do give money to state legislatures, I don’t know if I trust them any more to manage that money than the feds, where they could be robbing that block grant for general revenue.”
While President-elect Trump has not yet provided more information about his plans for Medicare, Republicans in the past, including Rep. Ryan, have proposed offering premium support to beneficiaries (sometimes called a voucher or defined contribution), a fixed sum given to Medicare participants to use toward premiums under traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage plans.
While this could reduce beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket costs, according to the CBO, spending could also increase and beneficiaries may pay variable out-of-pocket costs. Direct spending, meanwhile, would increase by $879 billion over the next decade if all the ACA and its changes to Medicare are eliminated, hastening depletion of the Medicare trust fund.2
“Frankly, I would not be opposed to seeing a sort of sliding scale for Medicare,” says Dr. Lenchus. “If you’re Warren Buffet taking $150 a month for Medicare, do you need to do that? That $150 spread to three other people who are barely making ends meet could make the difference for them taking a lifesaving medication that month.”
Day-to-Day Medicine
What should and will likely be maintained, both Glied and Dr. Lenchus say, are changes to the delivery of and payment models for healthcare. Medicine has been moving toward higher-quality care and away from fee-for-service for years, and “everybody would agree that’s probably not the correct incentive in medicine,” Dr. Lenchus adds.
With a shift toward more state-level responsibility, Glied says the GOP may also encourage states to innovate around healthcare so long as costs are well-managed. Incidentally, under the ACA, 2017 marks the start of Section 1332 waivers, which provide structure for states to develop their own approaches to healthcare.
However, “changes in the practice of medicine are not going to come out of government,” Glied says. “They’re going to come out of improvements in health IT technology, through changes in the use of midlevel professionals who eventually slide into practice as new residents come out of training.”
Though the election all but guaranteed continued uncertainty moving forward, Dr. Lenchus does not believe it will mean much change in his day-to-day practice of medicine. His safety-net hospital, however, may see an uptick in uncompensated care once more while also trying to survive with cuts to reimbursement made through the ACA.
““I don’t think anyone’s getting the hospitals back that money,” Glied says.
The experts say Congress has its work cut out, particularly as it shapes the future of healthcare in the U.S. based on conservative principles while also taking into account the potential number of newly uninsured patients upon repeal of the ACA.
“The problem is people don’t have coverage because they don’t have money. … Healthcare is expensive, and people are poor,” says Glied. “There is a lots of space to move left in healthcare. It’s hard to see where it can move right.”
Kelly April Tyrrell is a freelance writer in Madison, Wis.
References
- President Elect Donald J. Trump. https://www.greatagain.gov/policy/healthcare.html
Accessed November 22, 2016
- Budgetary and economic effects of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Congressional Budget Office website. Accessed November 15, 2016.
On November 8, 2016, the fate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was all but sealed.
In a sweep of the legislative branch, Republicans maintained majorities in the House and Senate, and Donald Trump became the 45th president, running on the popular Republican refrain to “repeal and replace Obamacare.”
“Now, the real onus is going to be on them if they do move to repeal it in its entirety,” says Joshua Lenchus, DO, RPh, FACP, SFHM, a hospitalist at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida and a member of SHM’s Public Policy Committee. “It’s going to be a real burden to replace it with something meaningful and not something that’s recycled from six or eight years ago when the conversation first started.”
In the days following the election, President-elect Trump appeared to be backing off his campaign promises to repeal President Barack Obama’s landmark health reform law, acknowledging that at least some of its provisions should remain intact, including maintaining the ban on insurance companies denying coverage based on preexisting conditions and allowing dependent children to remain on their parents’ health insurance until age 26.
These ideas are also part of House Majority Leader Paul Ryan’s healthcare plan, called A Better Way. However, at least on the campaign trail, Trump and GOP leaders like Rep. Ryan did not see eye-to-eye on all aspects of health reform, including how to deal with Medicare and on issues of pharmaceutical regulation, leaving uncertainty over which platforms will be adopted.
What Comes Next?
“There is a lot of rhetoric out there and a lot of promises to replace the Affordable Care Act, which clearly is an important objective for Republicans, but as sort of a consolation, as [health economist] Stuart Altman used to say before the Affordable Care Act was passed, ‘Everybody’s number-one choice is universal health reform the way they want it, and the second is the status quo,’” says Sherry Glied, MA, PhD, health policy expert and dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
But the status quo is no longer an option. Passage of the ACA was driven by high healthcare costs in the U.S. and, in part, around access to coverage. Healthcare spending slowed after passage of the ACA, and while it cannot be fully attributed to the law, cost remains an issue.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that repeal of the ACA would increase the federal deficit by $137 billion to $353 billion between 2016 and 2025, growing even more after 2025.1 And without a mechanism to cover the 20 million people who have gained coverage through Medicaid expansion and private insurance coverage on state exchanges, scores of people could rejoin the ranks of the uninsured.
A Series of Small Cuts
“Whatever system replaces it, don’t expect in Trump’s first week in office Congress will hand him a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. They’ve tried to do that a number of times in the past, and what they’ve come up with has been a little lackluster. And that’s being generous,” says Dr. Lenchus, who overall supports President-elect Trump’s economic plans and is optimistic about what they could mean for health reform.
Most likely, the ACA will not be repealed in “one fell swoop,” says Glied, who also served under President Obama in the Department of Health and Human Services from 2010 to 2012 and was a senior economist for health care and labor market policy under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Rather, lawmakers are likely faced with having to “demolish it through a series of small cuts.”
What that will look like remains unknown. To fully repeal the ACA, Republicans would need 60 filibuster-proof votes in the Senate. However, Republicans have just 51 seats to the Democrats’ 45 after the GOP lost two seats in the November election.
House Republicans can push through a bill using a legislative maneuver called reconciliation, but it requires a majority vote in both chambers and would be restricted to changes that have an impact on the federal budget. At a minimum, Republicans would need a budget before they could attempt this strategy.
They achieved this in late 2015, drafting a bill (H.R. 3762) that would have eliminated Medicaid expansion and the subsidies that currently help 83% of enrollees on the ACA exchange afford their premiums. President Obama vetoed the bill; President-elect Trump is unlikely to do the same.
However, he and Republican party leaders must first come to agreement over what their version of health reform should look like. In general, Republicans have called for a healthcare system rooted in the free market, with more individual responsibility, less regulation, and more flexibility.
For instance, Rep. Ryan’s planwould restrict insurers from denying patients with preexisting conditions but only if individuals maintain continuous coverage, with a one-time open-enrollment opportunity.
Campaign Promises Versus President-Elect Promises
While campaigning, President-elect Trump proposed a seven-point plan that included lifting restrictions on tax-free health savings accounts, providing tax deductions for health insurance premiums, allowing the sale of health insurance across state lines, requiring physicians and hospitals to be transparent about pricing, and eliminating the individual mandate to purchase health insurance. He also proposed converting Medicaid into block grants to states and vowed not to change Medicare.
As president-elect, he has pledged, with few details, to challenge abortion access, further research and development, provide “flexibility” to Medicaid, “modernize” Medicare, and reestablish high-risk pools for sick patients with traditionally high premiums. 1 The ACA does not currently allow insurers to charge sick patients higher rates than healthy ones.
While block grants are one option for attempting to control costs in Medicaid by providing states a fixed sum to administer the entitlement program, Rep. Ryan’s plan calls for another option: per-capita limits on enrollees on Medicaid. He has not detailed what those limits would be. What will happen in states that expanded Medicaid through the ACA relative to those that did not is also unknown.
“Frankly, I think that what this election showed is a complete disdain for the general establishment,” says Dr. Lenchus. “If they do give money to state legislatures, I don’t know if I trust them any more to manage that money than the feds, where they could be robbing that block grant for general revenue.”
While President-elect Trump has not yet provided more information about his plans for Medicare, Republicans in the past, including Rep. Ryan, have proposed offering premium support to beneficiaries (sometimes called a voucher or defined contribution), a fixed sum given to Medicare participants to use toward premiums under traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage plans.
While this could reduce beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket costs, according to the CBO, spending could also increase and beneficiaries may pay variable out-of-pocket costs. Direct spending, meanwhile, would increase by $879 billion over the next decade if all the ACA and its changes to Medicare are eliminated, hastening depletion of the Medicare trust fund.2
“Frankly, I would not be opposed to seeing a sort of sliding scale for Medicare,” says Dr. Lenchus. “If you’re Warren Buffet taking $150 a month for Medicare, do you need to do that? That $150 spread to three other people who are barely making ends meet could make the difference for them taking a lifesaving medication that month.”
Day-to-Day Medicine
What should and will likely be maintained, both Glied and Dr. Lenchus say, are changes to the delivery of and payment models for healthcare. Medicine has been moving toward higher-quality care and away from fee-for-service for years, and “everybody would agree that’s probably not the correct incentive in medicine,” Dr. Lenchus adds.
With a shift toward more state-level responsibility, Glied says the GOP may also encourage states to innovate around healthcare so long as costs are well-managed. Incidentally, under the ACA, 2017 marks the start of Section 1332 waivers, which provide structure for states to develop their own approaches to healthcare.
However, “changes in the practice of medicine are not going to come out of government,” Glied says. “They’re going to come out of improvements in health IT technology, through changes in the use of midlevel professionals who eventually slide into practice as new residents come out of training.”
Though the election all but guaranteed continued uncertainty moving forward, Dr. Lenchus does not believe it will mean much change in his day-to-day practice of medicine. His safety-net hospital, however, may see an uptick in uncompensated care once more while also trying to survive with cuts to reimbursement made through the ACA.
““I don’t think anyone’s getting the hospitals back that money,” Glied says.
The experts say Congress has its work cut out, particularly as it shapes the future of healthcare in the U.S. based on conservative principles while also taking into account the potential number of newly uninsured patients upon repeal of the ACA.
“The problem is people don’t have coverage because they don’t have money. … Healthcare is expensive, and people are poor,” says Glied. “There is a lots of space to move left in healthcare. It’s hard to see where it can move right.”
Kelly April Tyrrell is a freelance writer in Madison, Wis.
References
- President Elect Donald J. Trump. https://www.greatagain.gov/policy/healthcare.html
Accessed November 22, 2016
- Budgetary and economic effects of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Congressional Budget Office website. Accessed November 15, 2016.
On November 8, 2016, the fate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was all but sealed.
In a sweep of the legislative branch, Republicans maintained majorities in the House and Senate, and Donald Trump became the 45th president, running on the popular Republican refrain to “repeal and replace Obamacare.”
“Now, the real onus is going to be on them if they do move to repeal it in its entirety,” says Joshua Lenchus, DO, RPh, FACP, SFHM, a hospitalist at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida and a member of SHM’s Public Policy Committee. “It’s going to be a real burden to replace it with something meaningful and not something that’s recycled from six or eight years ago when the conversation first started.”
In the days following the election, President-elect Trump appeared to be backing off his campaign promises to repeal President Barack Obama’s landmark health reform law, acknowledging that at least some of its provisions should remain intact, including maintaining the ban on insurance companies denying coverage based on preexisting conditions and allowing dependent children to remain on their parents’ health insurance until age 26.
These ideas are also part of House Majority Leader Paul Ryan’s healthcare plan, called A Better Way. However, at least on the campaign trail, Trump and GOP leaders like Rep. Ryan did not see eye-to-eye on all aspects of health reform, including how to deal with Medicare and on issues of pharmaceutical regulation, leaving uncertainty over which platforms will be adopted.
What Comes Next?
“There is a lot of rhetoric out there and a lot of promises to replace the Affordable Care Act, which clearly is an important objective for Republicans, but as sort of a consolation, as [health economist] Stuart Altman used to say before the Affordable Care Act was passed, ‘Everybody’s number-one choice is universal health reform the way they want it, and the second is the status quo,’” says Sherry Glied, MA, PhD, health policy expert and dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
But the status quo is no longer an option. Passage of the ACA was driven by high healthcare costs in the U.S. and, in part, around access to coverage. Healthcare spending slowed after passage of the ACA, and while it cannot be fully attributed to the law, cost remains an issue.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that repeal of the ACA would increase the federal deficit by $137 billion to $353 billion between 2016 and 2025, growing even more after 2025.1 And without a mechanism to cover the 20 million people who have gained coverage through Medicaid expansion and private insurance coverage on state exchanges, scores of people could rejoin the ranks of the uninsured.
A Series of Small Cuts
“Whatever system replaces it, don’t expect in Trump’s first week in office Congress will hand him a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. They’ve tried to do that a number of times in the past, and what they’ve come up with has been a little lackluster. And that’s being generous,” says Dr. Lenchus, who overall supports President-elect Trump’s economic plans and is optimistic about what they could mean for health reform.
Most likely, the ACA will not be repealed in “one fell swoop,” says Glied, who also served under President Obama in the Department of Health and Human Services from 2010 to 2012 and was a senior economist for health care and labor market policy under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Rather, lawmakers are likely faced with having to “demolish it through a series of small cuts.”
What that will look like remains unknown. To fully repeal the ACA, Republicans would need 60 filibuster-proof votes in the Senate. However, Republicans have just 51 seats to the Democrats’ 45 after the GOP lost two seats in the November election.
House Republicans can push through a bill using a legislative maneuver called reconciliation, but it requires a majority vote in both chambers and would be restricted to changes that have an impact on the federal budget. At a minimum, Republicans would need a budget before they could attempt this strategy.
They achieved this in late 2015, drafting a bill (H.R. 3762) that would have eliminated Medicaid expansion and the subsidies that currently help 83% of enrollees on the ACA exchange afford their premiums. President Obama vetoed the bill; President-elect Trump is unlikely to do the same.
However, he and Republican party leaders must first come to agreement over what their version of health reform should look like. In general, Republicans have called for a healthcare system rooted in the free market, with more individual responsibility, less regulation, and more flexibility.
For instance, Rep. Ryan’s planwould restrict insurers from denying patients with preexisting conditions but only if individuals maintain continuous coverage, with a one-time open-enrollment opportunity.
Campaign Promises Versus President-Elect Promises
While campaigning, President-elect Trump proposed a seven-point plan that included lifting restrictions on tax-free health savings accounts, providing tax deductions for health insurance premiums, allowing the sale of health insurance across state lines, requiring physicians and hospitals to be transparent about pricing, and eliminating the individual mandate to purchase health insurance. He also proposed converting Medicaid into block grants to states and vowed not to change Medicare.
As president-elect, he has pledged, with few details, to challenge abortion access, further research and development, provide “flexibility” to Medicaid, “modernize” Medicare, and reestablish high-risk pools for sick patients with traditionally high premiums. 1 The ACA does not currently allow insurers to charge sick patients higher rates than healthy ones.
While block grants are one option for attempting to control costs in Medicaid by providing states a fixed sum to administer the entitlement program, Rep. Ryan’s plan calls for another option: per-capita limits on enrollees on Medicaid. He has not detailed what those limits would be. What will happen in states that expanded Medicaid through the ACA relative to those that did not is also unknown.
“Frankly, I think that what this election showed is a complete disdain for the general establishment,” says Dr. Lenchus. “If they do give money to state legislatures, I don’t know if I trust them any more to manage that money than the feds, where they could be robbing that block grant for general revenue.”
While President-elect Trump has not yet provided more information about his plans for Medicare, Republicans in the past, including Rep. Ryan, have proposed offering premium support to beneficiaries (sometimes called a voucher or defined contribution), a fixed sum given to Medicare participants to use toward premiums under traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage plans.
While this could reduce beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket costs, according to the CBO, spending could also increase and beneficiaries may pay variable out-of-pocket costs. Direct spending, meanwhile, would increase by $879 billion over the next decade if all the ACA and its changes to Medicare are eliminated, hastening depletion of the Medicare trust fund.2
“Frankly, I would not be opposed to seeing a sort of sliding scale for Medicare,” says Dr. Lenchus. “If you’re Warren Buffet taking $150 a month for Medicare, do you need to do that? That $150 spread to three other people who are barely making ends meet could make the difference for them taking a lifesaving medication that month.”
Day-to-Day Medicine
What should and will likely be maintained, both Glied and Dr. Lenchus say, are changes to the delivery of and payment models for healthcare. Medicine has been moving toward higher-quality care and away from fee-for-service for years, and “everybody would agree that’s probably not the correct incentive in medicine,” Dr. Lenchus adds.
With a shift toward more state-level responsibility, Glied says the GOP may also encourage states to innovate around healthcare so long as costs are well-managed. Incidentally, under the ACA, 2017 marks the start of Section 1332 waivers, which provide structure for states to develop their own approaches to healthcare.
However, “changes in the practice of medicine are not going to come out of government,” Glied says. “They’re going to come out of improvements in health IT technology, through changes in the use of midlevel professionals who eventually slide into practice as new residents come out of training.”
Though the election all but guaranteed continued uncertainty moving forward, Dr. Lenchus does not believe it will mean much change in his day-to-day practice of medicine. His safety-net hospital, however, may see an uptick in uncompensated care once more while also trying to survive with cuts to reimbursement made through the ACA.
““I don’t think anyone’s getting the hospitals back that money,” Glied says.
The experts say Congress has its work cut out, particularly as it shapes the future of healthcare in the U.S. based on conservative principles while also taking into account the potential number of newly uninsured patients upon repeal of the ACA.
“The problem is people don’t have coverage because they don’t have money. … Healthcare is expensive, and people are poor,” says Glied. “There is a lots of space to move left in healthcare. It’s hard to see where it can move right.”
Kelly April Tyrrell is a freelance writer in Madison, Wis.
References
- President Elect Donald J. Trump. https://www.greatagain.gov/policy/healthcare.html
Accessed November 22, 2016
- Budgetary and economic effects of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Congressional Budget Office website. Accessed November 15, 2016.
Trump administration to focus on ACA reform, tort reform
Look for three things from the Trump administration: significant changes to the Affordable Care Act, few changes to MACRA’s Quality Payment Program, and a conservative swing in the courts.
Republicans have had their sights on the Affordable Care Act since its passage in 2010; with majorities in both the House and the Senate, the question is not if, but when President Obama’s signature piece of legislation will be dismantled.
President-elect Donald Trump ran on the promise of ACA repeal. Health policy priorities on his transition website focus on greater use of health savings accounts, the ability to purchase insurance across state lines, and the reestablishment of high-risk pools.
Health policy experts differ in how they see ACA reform coming about, with some predicting a quick repeal coupled with an immediate legislative replacement, while others envision repeal with more time to craft replacement legislation. Reform also could come as a series of smaller bills rather than one comprehensive package.
Using budget reconciliation would not allow for full ACA repeal since only provisions that involve revenue generation or spending could be altered. However, since budget reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered, only a simple majority is needed for Senate passage. With their razor-thin majority – 51 seats – Republicans will need some support from outside of their own party.
“Twenty-some Democrats, many in very-deep ‘red states’ including North Dakota, are up for reelection in 2018,” Ms. Turner said. “They saw what happened to the candidates who supported Obamacare in 2016 – many of them went down. It happened with Evan Bayh in Indiana, who was running again to reclaim the Senate seat he left in 2010. And the Republican candidate [Todd Young] reminded the voters over and over that Evan Bayh voted for Obamacare. Same thing happened in Wisconsin with [Republican] Sen. Ron Johnson being challenged by Russ Feingold, who also was in the Senate when Obamacare passed. Feingold went down to defeat again. I think the lot of Democratic senators are going to be looking at what happened to those people and think ‘Maybe I better participate in coming up with a more sensible solution.’ ”
More importantly, the GOP may be looking for bipartisan support, especially since the ACA passed on a strict party-line vote. To that end, it could make more sense to delay reform efforts until a broader coalition can be formed and simultaneous repeal/replace package could be brought to both the House and the Senate floors.
In the new Congress, Senate Republicans might face some of the same obstructionist tactics they used during the Obama administration, which could complicate efforts to get bipartisan support.
“When you have people like Sen. [Bernie] Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. [Elizabeth] Warren (D-Mass.) saying they are going to adapt a scorched earth approach going forward, they and their followers don’t have any intention of doing anything that would in any way appear to cooperate with the Republicans,” Dr. Wilensky said. “Of course, there are other Democrats, especially some of the ones who will be up in 2018, who might not be quite so adamant.”
“Repeal without a clear idea of what the replacement would be would really throw that market into chaos, where right now we are at a place where the markets are relatively stable,” Dr. Collins said in an interview.“The best way to think about the ACA, and particularly on the marketplaces and what repeal means, is this image of the three-legged stool. The individual market is the seat and the legs include consumer protections, particularly guaranteed issue; the individual requirement to have insurance; and the subsidies to make that coverage affordable – Medicaid expansion is part of that as well. If you start to remove any one of those legs, the market becomes extremely unstable.”
Repealing the individual mandate is problematic as it goes hand in hand with the ban on coverage denial because of preexisting conditions, something President-elect Trump has signaled he is looking to maintain, Ms. Turner said, adding that free market solutions with appropriate incentives could be a different way to encourage healthy people to get coverage to help generate premium revenue to cover patients with preexisting conditions.
While the ACA will be in the crosshairs, experts expect MACRA to remain more or less intact, maybe with some minor tweaks, at least early on.
While the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 passed with overwhelming support from both parties, “the [implementing regulations] are just a nightmare and I think the Trump administration is going to have to take a look at them,” Ms. Turner said. She added that physicians are weary of the ever-growing federal administrative hassles. “You do not want doctors to leave private practice in droves, and they are looking at this cost of compliance.”
“I think that [MACRA] is just way too much of an in-the-weeds policy thing for the Trump administration to have addressed yet,” Ms. Turner continued. “But this certainly is going to have to be on the agenda because they are going to hear from a lot of doctors that this is not acceptable.”
Mr. Trump also has called for Medicaid reform, with block grants to the states.
“Everyone keeps talking about a block grant, but that is a clumsy way of doing it,” Ms. Turner said, suggesting the program be even more refined to cover people in different baskets, including dual-eligibles, healthy adults that were part of the ACA Medicaid expansion, mothers and infants, and disabled individuals. “A capitated allotment [allows the government to provide more support to] the people who need it.”
Dr. Wilensky suggested that the Trump administration could revisit the 1332 waiver process, another provision of the ACA.
“The current administration has taken a very-rigid view on that you have to keep savings from Medicaid and the ACA separate and any changes have to be budget neutral to each, which is an extremely rigid set of requirements,” she said. Instead “Medicaid and ACA savings could count together and it just needs to be budget neutral over a 3- or 5-year period. That would then allow states to come in and request a lot of flexibility that the current administration hasn’t been inclined to give them.”
Likewise, the Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) is up for reauthorization. While the program remains relatively popular, it could be due for some reforms as well. Dr. Wilensky said it might be time for the program to go away, though doing that would face resistance from congressional Democrats.
Likewise, Ms. Turner suggested it could be time to fold CHIP into another program like Medicaid.
“Does it really make sense for a mother who is overwhelmed, maybe even with two jobs, to have her kids on a different health insurance program than she’s on?” Ms. Turner said. “It just adds to the burden and the paperwork. Would it make more sense to blend some of these programs together, making sure the people get the health coverage they need, but without all these artificial silos that really make it much more difficult for the user at the other end. I think they are going to take a look at that.”
Whether the ACA is amended or repealed may affect some – but not all – of the ACA-related cases lingering in the courts.
Zubik v. Burwell for instance, may become irrelevant if President-elect Trump eliminates the ACA’s birth control mandate or its accommodation clause. Zubik centers on an exception to the birth control mandate for organizations that oppose coverage for contraceptives but are not exempted entities, such as churches. The plaintiffs argue that the government’s opt-out process makes them complicit in offering contraception coverage indirectly.
The Trump administration could choose to broaden the mandate’s exemption to include the religious organizations, thus satisfying the plaintiffs, said Timothy S. Jost, a health law professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., who added that the case would become moot if the ACA is repealed wholesale.
“Millions of women [currently] get access to birth control without cost sharing through the Affordable Care Act,” he said in an interview. “That’s an issue [the new administration] is going to have to confront.”
In March, U.S. Supreme Court justices requested that both sides provide new briefs that outlined how contraception could be provided without requiring notice on the part of the suing employers. Then, in light of the briefs, the high court vacated the lower court rulings related to Zubik and remanded the case to the four appeals courts that had originally ruled on the issue.
If the case makes its way back to the Supreme Court, the ultimate ruling will largely depend on the makeup of the court at the time, said Eric D. Fader, a New York–based health law attorney.
“As long as we have a 4-4 Supreme Court, everything is up in the air,” Mr. Fader said in an interview. “As soon as that ninth slot is filled, I think we’re going to see some decisions that are going to be in line with traditional Republican conservative positions.”
However, a set of ACA-related cases that involve payments to insurers will continue litigating, regardless of actions by the new administration, analysts said. A half-dozen health insurers have sued the Health & Human Services department over alleged underpayments under the ACA’s risk corridor program.
“Even if you do away with the ACA, these cases all pertain to conduct that has already occurred, so they’re not going to be automatically moot,” Mr. Fader said in an interview. “They may struggle along for a while.”
The cases stem from the ACA’s risk corridor program, which requires HHS to collect funds from excessively profitable insurers that offer qualified health plans under the exchanges, while paying out funds to QHP insurers that have excessive losses. Collections from profitable insurers under the program fell short in 2014 and again in 2015, resulting in HHS paying about 12 cents on the dollar in payments to insurers.
The plaintiffs allege they’ve been shortchanged and that the government must reimburse them full payments for 2014. The Department of Justice (DOJ) argues the cases are premature because the full amount owed under the program is not due until 2016, after the program runs its course.
The Trump administration may surrender another ACA-linked challenge that questions billions in payments made to insurers, Mr. Jost said in an interview. In House v. Burwell, the House of Representatives accuses HHS of wrongly spending billions to repay insurers for health insurance provided to certain low-income patients under the ACA. The House claims HHS is illegally spending monies that Congress never appropriated. HHS argues that other statutory provisions of the ACA authorize expenditures for cost-sharing reimbursements. In May, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decided in favor of the House, ruling that Congress never appropriated money for the payments and that no public money can be spent without an appropriation.
There is speculation that the Trump administration may not pursue an appeal, Mr. Jost said. “I think they better think long and hard about that because I don’t know why any president would want court precedent saying one house of Congress can sue the president whenever it disagrees,” he said. “If the Trump administration would give in on the lawsuit or the House would win … there would be some very large losses and some very large premium increases next year. There could be some very significant disruption of insurance markets.”
Again, if the ACA is repealed, the case may become irrelevant, Mr. Fader said. “If you get rid of the ACA and eliminate the cost sharing structure, than House v. Burwell is going to just be moot.”
“We have seen a substantial uptick in antitrust enforcement activity in health care over the last several years,” he said in an interview. “The Trump administration has said that one of its themes is reducing the regulatory burden on businesses. People will be watching to see if that means an attempt to back off of some of the more-aggressive antitrust enforcement activities in health care and other industries.”
The Obama administration is currently fighting to block two mega-mergers among four of the largest health insurers in the nation. The DOJ filed legal challenges earlier this year seeking to ban Anthem’s proposed acquisition of Cigna and Aetna’s proposed acquisition of Humana. The lawsuits allege the mergers – valued at $54 billion and $37 billion respectively – would negatively affect doctors, patients, and employers by limiting price competition, reducing benefits, and lowering quality of care. A majority of physician associations and patient groups oppose the mergers. But experts said the new administration could drop the challenges.
Similarly, the Trump administration could be more lax in its enforcement of the Stark Law. “You could certainly say if the administration is committed to reducing regulatory burden, one thing the administration might push forward is reducing some of the enforcement with respect to technical violations of Stark,” Mr. Horton said, noting that the Senate recently questioned if the government is going too far in regulating physician relationships under Stark. “If your theme is ‘Let’s cut back on regulation,’ that would be an area that you would think the administration would look at.”
Meanwhile, stronger medical malpractice reforms could be on the horizon in light of a Republican-controlled Congress. Tort reform advocates have a good chance at passing federal medical liability reforms that were left out of the ACA’s passage in 2010, said Dennis A. Cardoza, public affairs director and cochair of the federal public affairs practice at a national health law firm.
Earlier versions of the ACA included amendments that mandated lawsuits go through a state or federal alternative dispute resolution system prior to being filed in court. Another provision that failed would have provided federal grants to states that created special health courts for medical malpractice claims. The amendment would have allowed states to create expert panels, administrative health care tribunals, or a combination of the two.
“There’s much stronger support for tort reform among the Republicans in Congress,” Mr. Cardoza said in an interview. “There’s a shot [now]. If the reforms don’t go too far where they would penalize injured patients, I think they could get additional support and be well received by the Congress.”
Tougher abortion restrictions are likely under the Trump administration, experts said. President-elect Trump has said he is committed to nominating a ninth Supreme Court justice who opposes Roe v. Wade.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is considered a strong voice for the religious right, will likely influence who Mr. Trump nominates for the high court, said Rep-elect Raskin, who added that if ever there was time that abortion rights are in jeopardy, it’s now.
“This really puts the Republicans to the test,” he said in an interview. “For decades now, they have been calling for the overruling of Roe v. Wade. The religious right will never forgive them if it doesn’t happen now. [Republicans] control the House, the Senate, and the White House. They have it within their reach to create a five-justice majority on the court.”
gtwachtman@frontlinemedcom.com
agallegos@frontlinemedcom.com
On Twitter @legal_med
Look for three things from the Trump administration: significant changes to the Affordable Care Act, few changes to MACRA’s Quality Payment Program, and a conservative swing in the courts.
Republicans have had their sights on the Affordable Care Act since its passage in 2010; with majorities in both the House and the Senate, the question is not if, but when President Obama’s signature piece of legislation will be dismantled.
President-elect Donald Trump ran on the promise of ACA repeal. Health policy priorities on his transition website focus on greater use of health savings accounts, the ability to purchase insurance across state lines, and the reestablishment of high-risk pools.
Health policy experts differ in how they see ACA reform coming about, with some predicting a quick repeal coupled with an immediate legislative replacement, while others envision repeal with more time to craft replacement legislation. Reform also could come as a series of smaller bills rather than one comprehensive package.
Using budget reconciliation would not allow for full ACA repeal since only provisions that involve revenue generation or spending could be altered. However, since budget reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered, only a simple majority is needed for Senate passage. With their razor-thin majority – 51 seats – Republicans will need some support from outside of their own party.
“Twenty-some Democrats, many in very-deep ‘red states’ including North Dakota, are up for reelection in 2018,” Ms. Turner said. “They saw what happened to the candidates who supported Obamacare in 2016 – many of them went down. It happened with Evan Bayh in Indiana, who was running again to reclaim the Senate seat he left in 2010. And the Republican candidate [Todd Young] reminded the voters over and over that Evan Bayh voted for Obamacare. Same thing happened in Wisconsin with [Republican] Sen. Ron Johnson being challenged by Russ Feingold, who also was in the Senate when Obamacare passed. Feingold went down to defeat again. I think the lot of Democratic senators are going to be looking at what happened to those people and think ‘Maybe I better participate in coming up with a more sensible solution.’ ”
More importantly, the GOP may be looking for bipartisan support, especially since the ACA passed on a strict party-line vote. To that end, it could make more sense to delay reform efforts until a broader coalition can be formed and simultaneous repeal/replace package could be brought to both the House and the Senate floors.
In the new Congress, Senate Republicans might face some of the same obstructionist tactics they used during the Obama administration, which could complicate efforts to get bipartisan support.
“When you have people like Sen. [Bernie] Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. [Elizabeth] Warren (D-Mass.) saying they are going to adapt a scorched earth approach going forward, they and their followers don’t have any intention of doing anything that would in any way appear to cooperate with the Republicans,” Dr. Wilensky said. “Of course, there are other Democrats, especially some of the ones who will be up in 2018, who might not be quite so adamant.”
“Repeal without a clear idea of what the replacement would be would really throw that market into chaos, where right now we are at a place where the markets are relatively stable,” Dr. Collins said in an interview.“The best way to think about the ACA, and particularly on the marketplaces and what repeal means, is this image of the three-legged stool. The individual market is the seat and the legs include consumer protections, particularly guaranteed issue; the individual requirement to have insurance; and the subsidies to make that coverage affordable – Medicaid expansion is part of that as well. If you start to remove any one of those legs, the market becomes extremely unstable.”
Repealing the individual mandate is problematic as it goes hand in hand with the ban on coverage denial because of preexisting conditions, something President-elect Trump has signaled he is looking to maintain, Ms. Turner said, adding that free market solutions with appropriate incentives could be a different way to encourage healthy people to get coverage to help generate premium revenue to cover patients with preexisting conditions.
While the ACA will be in the crosshairs, experts expect MACRA to remain more or less intact, maybe with some minor tweaks, at least early on.
While the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 passed with overwhelming support from both parties, “the [implementing regulations] are just a nightmare and I think the Trump administration is going to have to take a look at them,” Ms. Turner said. She added that physicians are weary of the ever-growing federal administrative hassles. “You do not want doctors to leave private practice in droves, and they are looking at this cost of compliance.”
“I think that [MACRA] is just way too much of an in-the-weeds policy thing for the Trump administration to have addressed yet,” Ms. Turner continued. “But this certainly is going to have to be on the agenda because they are going to hear from a lot of doctors that this is not acceptable.”
Mr. Trump also has called for Medicaid reform, with block grants to the states.
“Everyone keeps talking about a block grant, but that is a clumsy way of doing it,” Ms. Turner said, suggesting the program be even more refined to cover people in different baskets, including dual-eligibles, healthy adults that were part of the ACA Medicaid expansion, mothers and infants, and disabled individuals. “A capitated allotment [allows the government to provide more support to] the people who need it.”
Dr. Wilensky suggested that the Trump administration could revisit the 1332 waiver process, another provision of the ACA.
“The current administration has taken a very-rigid view on that you have to keep savings from Medicaid and the ACA separate and any changes have to be budget neutral to each, which is an extremely rigid set of requirements,” she said. Instead “Medicaid and ACA savings could count together and it just needs to be budget neutral over a 3- or 5-year period. That would then allow states to come in and request a lot of flexibility that the current administration hasn’t been inclined to give them.”
Likewise, the Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) is up for reauthorization. While the program remains relatively popular, it could be due for some reforms as well. Dr. Wilensky said it might be time for the program to go away, though doing that would face resistance from congressional Democrats.
Likewise, Ms. Turner suggested it could be time to fold CHIP into another program like Medicaid.
“Does it really make sense for a mother who is overwhelmed, maybe even with two jobs, to have her kids on a different health insurance program than she’s on?” Ms. Turner said. “It just adds to the burden and the paperwork. Would it make more sense to blend some of these programs together, making sure the people get the health coverage they need, but without all these artificial silos that really make it much more difficult for the user at the other end. I think they are going to take a look at that.”
Whether the ACA is amended or repealed may affect some – but not all – of the ACA-related cases lingering in the courts.
Zubik v. Burwell for instance, may become irrelevant if President-elect Trump eliminates the ACA’s birth control mandate or its accommodation clause. Zubik centers on an exception to the birth control mandate for organizations that oppose coverage for contraceptives but are not exempted entities, such as churches. The plaintiffs argue that the government’s opt-out process makes them complicit in offering contraception coverage indirectly.
The Trump administration could choose to broaden the mandate’s exemption to include the religious organizations, thus satisfying the plaintiffs, said Timothy S. Jost, a health law professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., who added that the case would become moot if the ACA is repealed wholesale.
“Millions of women [currently] get access to birth control without cost sharing through the Affordable Care Act,” he said in an interview. “That’s an issue [the new administration] is going to have to confront.”
In March, U.S. Supreme Court justices requested that both sides provide new briefs that outlined how contraception could be provided without requiring notice on the part of the suing employers. Then, in light of the briefs, the high court vacated the lower court rulings related to Zubik and remanded the case to the four appeals courts that had originally ruled on the issue.
If the case makes its way back to the Supreme Court, the ultimate ruling will largely depend on the makeup of the court at the time, said Eric D. Fader, a New York–based health law attorney.
“As long as we have a 4-4 Supreme Court, everything is up in the air,” Mr. Fader said in an interview. “As soon as that ninth slot is filled, I think we’re going to see some decisions that are going to be in line with traditional Republican conservative positions.”
However, a set of ACA-related cases that involve payments to insurers will continue litigating, regardless of actions by the new administration, analysts said. A half-dozen health insurers have sued the Health & Human Services department over alleged underpayments under the ACA’s risk corridor program.
“Even if you do away with the ACA, these cases all pertain to conduct that has already occurred, so they’re not going to be automatically moot,” Mr. Fader said in an interview. “They may struggle along for a while.”
The cases stem from the ACA’s risk corridor program, which requires HHS to collect funds from excessively profitable insurers that offer qualified health plans under the exchanges, while paying out funds to QHP insurers that have excessive losses. Collections from profitable insurers under the program fell short in 2014 and again in 2015, resulting in HHS paying about 12 cents on the dollar in payments to insurers.
The plaintiffs allege they’ve been shortchanged and that the government must reimburse them full payments for 2014. The Department of Justice (DOJ) argues the cases are premature because the full amount owed under the program is not due until 2016, after the program runs its course.
The Trump administration may surrender another ACA-linked challenge that questions billions in payments made to insurers, Mr. Jost said in an interview. In House v. Burwell, the House of Representatives accuses HHS of wrongly spending billions to repay insurers for health insurance provided to certain low-income patients under the ACA. The House claims HHS is illegally spending monies that Congress never appropriated. HHS argues that other statutory provisions of the ACA authorize expenditures for cost-sharing reimbursements. In May, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decided in favor of the House, ruling that Congress never appropriated money for the payments and that no public money can be spent without an appropriation.
There is speculation that the Trump administration may not pursue an appeal, Mr. Jost said. “I think they better think long and hard about that because I don’t know why any president would want court precedent saying one house of Congress can sue the president whenever it disagrees,” he said. “If the Trump administration would give in on the lawsuit or the House would win … there would be some very large losses and some very large premium increases next year. There could be some very significant disruption of insurance markets.”
Again, if the ACA is repealed, the case may become irrelevant, Mr. Fader said. “If you get rid of the ACA and eliminate the cost sharing structure, than House v. Burwell is going to just be moot.”
“We have seen a substantial uptick in antitrust enforcement activity in health care over the last several years,” he said in an interview. “The Trump administration has said that one of its themes is reducing the regulatory burden on businesses. People will be watching to see if that means an attempt to back off of some of the more-aggressive antitrust enforcement activities in health care and other industries.”
The Obama administration is currently fighting to block two mega-mergers among four of the largest health insurers in the nation. The DOJ filed legal challenges earlier this year seeking to ban Anthem’s proposed acquisition of Cigna and Aetna’s proposed acquisition of Humana. The lawsuits allege the mergers – valued at $54 billion and $37 billion respectively – would negatively affect doctors, patients, and employers by limiting price competition, reducing benefits, and lowering quality of care. A majority of physician associations and patient groups oppose the mergers. But experts said the new administration could drop the challenges.
Similarly, the Trump administration could be more lax in its enforcement of the Stark Law. “You could certainly say if the administration is committed to reducing regulatory burden, one thing the administration might push forward is reducing some of the enforcement with respect to technical violations of Stark,” Mr. Horton said, noting that the Senate recently questioned if the government is going too far in regulating physician relationships under Stark. “If your theme is ‘Let’s cut back on regulation,’ that would be an area that you would think the administration would look at.”
Meanwhile, stronger medical malpractice reforms could be on the horizon in light of a Republican-controlled Congress. Tort reform advocates have a good chance at passing federal medical liability reforms that were left out of the ACA’s passage in 2010, said Dennis A. Cardoza, public affairs director and cochair of the federal public affairs practice at a national health law firm.
Earlier versions of the ACA included amendments that mandated lawsuits go through a state or federal alternative dispute resolution system prior to being filed in court. Another provision that failed would have provided federal grants to states that created special health courts for medical malpractice claims. The amendment would have allowed states to create expert panels, administrative health care tribunals, or a combination of the two.
“There’s much stronger support for tort reform among the Republicans in Congress,” Mr. Cardoza said in an interview. “There’s a shot [now]. If the reforms don’t go too far where they would penalize injured patients, I think they could get additional support and be well received by the Congress.”
Tougher abortion restrictions are likely under the Trump administration, experts said. President-elect Trump has said he is committed to nominating a ninth Supreme Court justice who opposes Roe v. Wade.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is considered a strong voice for the religious right, will likely influence who Mr. Trump nominates for the high court, said Rep-elect Raskin, who added that if ever there was time that abortion rights are in jeopardy, it’s now.
“This really puts the Republicans to the test,” he said in an interview. “For decades now, they have been calling for the overruling of Roe v. Wade. The religious right will never forgive them if it doesn’t happen now. [Republicans] control the House, the Senate, and the White House. They have it within their reach to create a five-justice majority on the court.”
gtwachtman@frontlinemedcom.com
agallegos@frontlinemedcom.com
On Twitter @legal_med
Look for three things from the Trump administration: significant changes to the Affordable Care Act, few changes to MACRA’s Quality Payment Program, and a conservative swing in the courts.
Republicans have had their sights on the Affordable Care Act since its passage in 2010; with majorities in both the House and the Senate, the question is not if, but when President Obama’s signature piece of legislation will be dismantled.
President-elect Donald Trump ran on the promise of ACA repeal. Health policy priorities on his transition website focus on greater use of health savings accounts, the ability to purchase insurance across state lines, and the reestablishment of high-risk pools.
Health policy experts differ in how they see ACA reform coming about, with some predicting a quick repeal coupled with an immediate legislative replacement, while others envision repeal with more time to craft replacement legislation. Reform also could come as a series of smaller bills rather than one comprehensive package.
Using budget reconciliation would not allow for full ACA repeal since only provisions that involve revenue generation or spending could be altered. However, since budget reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered, only a simple majority is needed for Senate passage. With their razor-thin majority – 51 seats – Republicans will need some support from outside of their own party.
“Twenty-some Democrats, many in very-deep ‘red states’ including North Dakota, are up for reelection in 2018,” Ms. Turner said. “They saw what happened to the candidates who supported Obamacare in 2016 – many of them went down. It happened with Evan Bayh in Indiana, who was running again to reclaim the Senate seat he left in 2010. And the Republican candidate [Todd Young] reminded the voters over and over that Evan Bayh voted for Obamacare. Same thing happened in Wisconsin with [Republican] Sen. Ron Johnson being challenged by Russ Feingold, who also was in the Senate when Obamacare passed. Feingold went down to defeat again. I think the lot of Democratic senators are going to be looking at what happened to those people and think ‘Maybe I better participate in coming up with a more sensible solution.’ ”
More importantly, the GOP may be looking for bipartisan support, especially since the ACA passed on a strict party-line vote. To that end, it could make more sense to delay reform efforts until a broader coalition can be formed and simultaneous repeal/replace package could be brought to both the House and the Senate floors.
In the new Congress, Senate Republicans might face some of the same obstructionist tactics they used during the Obama administration, which could complicate efforts to get bipartisan support.
“When you have people like Sen. [Bernie] Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. [Elizabeth] Warren (D-Mass.) saying they are going to adapt a scorched earth approach going forward, they and their followers don’t have any intention of doing anything that would in any way appear to cooperate with the Republicans,” Dr. Wilensky said. “Of course, there are other Democrats, especially some of the ones who will be up in 2018, who might not be quite so adamant.”
“Repeal without a clear idea of what the replacement would be would really throw that market into chaos, where right now we are at a place where the markets are relatively stable,” Dr. Collins said in an interview.“The best way to think about the ACA, and particularly on the marketplaces and what repeal means, is this image of the three-legged stool. The individual market is the seat and the legs include consumer protections, particularly guaranteed issue; the individual requirement to have insurance; and the subsidies to make that coverage affordable – Medicaid expansion is part of that as well. If you start to remove any one of those legs, the market becomes extremely unstable.”
Repealing the individual mandate is problematic as it goes hand in hand with the ban on coverage denial because of preexisting conditions, something President-elect Trump has signaled he is looking to maintain, Ms. Turner said, adding that free market solutions with appropriate incentives could be a different way to encourage healthy people to get coverage to help generate premium revenue to cover patients with preexisting conditions.
While the ACA will be in the crosshairs, experts expect MACRA to remain more or less intact, maybe with some minor tweaks, at least early on.
While the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 passed with overwhelming support from both parties, “the [implementing regulations] are just a nightmare and I think the Trump administration is going to have to take a look at them,” Ms. Turner said. She added that physicians are weary of the ever-growing federal administrative hassles. “You do not want doctors to leave private practice in droves, and they are looking at this cost of compliance.”
“I think that [MACRA] is just way too much of an in-the-weeds policy thing for the Trump administration to have addressed yet,” Ms. Turner continued. “But this certainly is going to have to be on the agenda because they are going to hear from a lot of doctors that this is not acceptable.”
Mr. Trump also has called for Medicaid reform, with block grants to the states.
“Everyone keeps talking about a block grant, but that is a clumsy way of doing it,” Ms. Turner said, suggesting the program be even more refined to cover people in different baskets, including dual-eligibles, healthy adults that were part of the ACA Medicaid expansion, mothers and infants, and disabled individuals. “A capitated allotment [allows the government to provide more support to] the people who need it.”
Dr. Wilensky suggested that the Trump administration could revisit the 1332 waiver process, another provision of the ACA.
“The current administration has taken a very-rigid view on that you have to keep savings from Medicaid and the ACA separate and any changes have to be budget neutral to each, which is an extremely rigid set of requirements,” she said. Instead “Medicaid and ACA savings could count together and it just needs to be budget neutral over a 3- or 5-year period. That would then allow states to come in and request a lot of flexibility that the current administration hasn’t been inclined to give them.”
Likewise, the Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) is up for reauthorization. While the program remains relatively popular, it could be due for some reforms as well. Dr. Wilensky said it might be time for the program to go away, though doing that would face resistance from congressional Democrats.
Likewise, Ms. Turner suggested it could be time to fold CHIP into another program like Medicaid.
“Does it really make sense for a mother who is overwhelmed, maybe even with two jobs, to have her kids on a different health insurance program than she’s on?” Ms. Turner said. “It just adds to the burden and the paperwork. Would it make more sense to blend some of these programs together, making sure the people get the health coverage they need, but without all these artificial silos that really make it much more difficult for the user at the other end. I think they are going to take a look at that.”
Whether the ACA is amended or repealed may affect some – but not all – of the ACA-related cases lingering in the courts.
Zubik v. Burwell for instance, may become irrelevant if President-elect Trump eliminates the ACA’s birth control mandate or its accommodation clause. Zubik centers on an exception to the birth control mandate for organizations that oppose coverage for contraceptives but are not exempted entities, such as churches. The plaintiffs argue that the government’s opt-out process makes them complicit in offering contraception coverage indirectly.
The Trump administration could choose to broaden the mandate’s exemption to include the religious organizations, thus satisfying the plaintiffs, said Timothy S. Jost, a health law professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., who added that the case would become moot if the ACA is repealed wholesale.
“Millions of women [currently] get access to birth control without cost sharing through the Affordable Care Act,” he said in an interview. “That’s an issue [the new administration] is going to have to confront.”
In March, U.S. Supreme Court justices requested that both sides provide new briefs that outlined how contraception could be provided without requiring notice on the part of the suing employers. Then, in light of the briefs, the high court vacated the lower court rulings related to Zubik and remanded the case to the four appeals courts that had originally ruled on the issue.
If the case makes its way back to the Supreme Court, the ultimate ruling will largely depend on the makeup of the court at the time, said Eric D. Fader, a New York–based health law attorney.
“As long as we have a 4-4 Supreme Court, everything is up in the air,” Mr. Fader said in an interview. “As soon as that ninth slot is filled, I think we’re going to see some decisions that are going to be in line with traditional Republican conservative positions.”
However, a set of ACA-related cases that involve payments to insurers will continue litigating, regardless of actions by the new administration, analysts said. A half-dozen health insurers have sued the Health & Human Services department over alleged underpayments under the ACA’s risk corridor program.
“Even if you do away with the ACA, these cases all pertain to conduct that has already occurred, so they’re not going to be automatically moot,” Mr. Fader said in an interview. “They may struggle along for a while.”
The cases stem from the ACA’s risk corridor program, which requires HHS to collect funds from excessively profitable insurers that offer qualified health plans under the exchanges, while paying out funds to QHP insurers that have excessive losses. Collections from profitable insurers under the program fell short in 2014 and again in 2015, resulting in HHS paying about 12 cents on the dollar in payments to insurers.
The plaintiffs allege they’ve been shortchanged and that the government must reimburse them full payments for 2014. The Department of Justice (DOJ) argues the cases are premature because the full amount owed under the program is not due until 2016, after the program runs its course.
The Trump administration may surrender another ACA-linked challenge that questions billions in payments made to insurers, Mr. Jost said in an interview. In House v. Burwell, the House of Representatives accuses HHS of wrongly spending billions to repay insurers for health insurance provided to certain low-income patients under the ACA. The House claims HHS is illegally spending monies that Congress never appropriated. HHS argues that other statutory provisions of the ACA authorize expenditures for cost-sharing reimbursements. In May, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decided in favor of the House, ruling that Congress never appropriated money for the payments and that no public money can be spent without an appropriation.
There is speculation that the Trump administration may not pursue an appeal, Mr. Jost said. “I think they better think long and hard about that because I don’t know why any president would want court precedent saying one house of Congress can sue the president whenever it disagrees,” he said. “If the Trump administration would give in on the lawsuit or the House would win … there would be some very large losses and some very large premium increases next year. There could be some very significant disruption of insurance markets.”
Again, if the ACA is repealed, the case may become irrelevant, Mr. Fader said. “If you get rid of the ACA and eliminate the cost sharing structure, than House v. Burwell is going to just be moot.”
“We have seen a substantial uptick in antitrust enforcement activity in health care over the last several years,” he said in an interview. “The Trump administration has said that one of its themes is reducing the regulatory burden on businesses. People will be watching to see if that means an attempt to back off of some of the more-aggressive antitrust enforcement activities in health care and other industries.”
The Obama administration is currently fighting to block two mega-mergers among four of the largest health insurers in the nation. The DOJ filed legal challenges earlier this year seeking to ban Anthem’s proposed acquisition of Cigna and Aetna’s proposed acquisition of Humana. The lawsuits allege the mergers – valued at $54 billion and $37 billion respectively – would negatively affect doctors, patients, and employers by limiting price competition, reducing benefits, and lowering quality of care. A majority of physician associations and patient groups oppose the mergers. But experts said the new administration could drop the challenges.
Similarly, the Trump administration could be more lax in its enforcement of the Stark Law. “You could certainly say if the administration is committed to reducing regulatory burden, one thing the administration might push forward is reducing some of the enforcement with respect to technical violations of Stark,” Mr. Horton said, noting that the Senate recently questioned if the government is going too far in regulating physician relationships under Stark. “If your theme is ‘Let’s cut back on regulation,’ that would be an area that you would think the administration would look at.”
Meanwhile, stronger medical malpractice reforms could be on the horizon in light of a Republican-controlled Congress. Tort reform advocates have a good chance at passing federal medical liability reforms that were left out of the ACA’s passage in 2010, said Dennis A. Cardoza, public affairs director and cochair of the federal public affairs practice at a national health law firm.
Earlier versions of the ACA included amendments that mandated lawsuits go through a state or federal alternative dispute resolution system prior to being filed in court. Another provision that failed would have provided federal grants to states that created special health courts for medical malpractice claims. The amendment would have allowed states to create expert panels, administrative health care tribunals, or a combination of the two.
“There’s much stronger support for tort reform among the Republicans in Congress,” Mr. Cardoza said in an interview. “There’s a shot [now]. If the reforms don’t go too far where they would penalize injured patients, I think they could get additional support and be well received by the Congress.”
Tougher abortion restrictions are likely under the Trump administration, experts said. President-elect Trump has said he is committed to nominating a ninth Supreme Court justice who opposes Roe v. Wade.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is considered a strong voice for the religious right, will likely influence who Mr. Trump nominates for the high court, said Rep-elect Raskin, who added that if ever there was time that abortion rights are in jeopardy, it’s now.
“This really puts the Republicans to the test,” he said in an interview. “For decades now, they have been calling for the overruling of Roe v. Wade. The religious right will never forgive them if it doesn’t happen now. [Republicans] control the House, the Senate, and the White House. They have it within their reach to create a five-justice majority on the court.”
gtwachtman@frontlinemedcom.com
agallegos@frontlinemedcom.com
On Twitter @legal_med
Theranos Receives Biggest Blow as CMS Revokes Certificate for Government Payments
Theranos Inc founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, once touted as the Steve Jobs of biotech for her company's innovative blood-testing technology, has been barred by a U.S. regulator from owning or operating a lab for at least two years.
Dealing the biggest blow yet to the privately held company, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services revoked a key certificate for its California lab and terminated the facility's approval to receive government payments.
Medicare is the government's medical insurance program for the elderly, while Medicaid is for the poor.
The sanctions, which also include an unspecified monetary penalty, come six months after the regulator sent a scathing letter to the company, saying its practices were jeopardizing patient health and safety.
Theranos said late on Thursday that it would continue to service its customers through its Arizona lab.
The company, once valued at $9 billion, was founded by Holmes in 2003 to develop an innovative blood testing device that would give quicker results using just one drop of blood.
However, its fortunes waned after the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles starting in October last year that suggested the devices were flawed and inaccurate.
Forbes magazine said last month that the company's value had fallen to about $800 million, while Holmes' own net worth had shrunk to zero from about $4.5 billion - a figure the magazine had said had made her the richest self-made woman in America.
"Everyone wanted her to succeed," Steve Brozak, president of WBB Securities, told Reuters, noting that the basic blood diagnostics sector has not had a significant advance in technology in 90 years.
Walgreens Boots Alliance terminated its relationship with the company last month and closed operations at all 40 Theranos Wellness Centers at its drug stores in Arizona.
Theranos is also facing a class action lawsuit filed in May accusing it of endangering customer health through "massive failures" that misrepresented test results.
The Palo Alto, California-based company is also being investigated by other federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the State Department of Health in Arizona.
Theranos Inc founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, once touted as the Steve Jobs of biotech for her company's innovative blood-testing technology, has been barred by a U.S. regulator from owning or operating a lab for at least two years.
Dealing the biggest blow yet to the privately held company, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services revoked a key certificate for its California lab and terminated the facility's approval to receive government payments.
Medicare is the government's medical insurance program for the elderly, while Medicaid is for the poor.
The sanctions, which also include an unspecified monetary penalty, come six months after the regulator sent a scathing letter to the company, saying its practices were jeopardizing patient health and safety.
Theranos said late on Thursday that it would continue to service its customers through its Arizona lab.
The company, once valued at $9 billion, was founded by Holmes in 2003 to develop an innovative blood testing device that would give quicker results using just one drop of blood.
However, its fortunes waned after the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles starting in October last year that suggested the devices were flawed and inaccurate.
Forbes magazine said last month that the company's value had fallen to about $800 million, while Holmes' own net worth had shrunk to zero from about $4.5 billion - a figure the magazine had said had made her the richest self-made woman in America.
"Everyone wanted her to succeed," Steve Brozak, president of WBB Securities, told Reuters, noting that the basic blood diagnostics sector has not had a significant advance in technology in 90 years.
Walgreens Boots Alliance terminated its relationship with the company last month and closed operations at all 40 Theranos Wellness Centers at its drug stores in Arizona.
Theranos is also facing a class action lawsuit filed in May accusing it of endangering customer health through "massive failures" that misrepresented test results.
The Palo Alto, California-based company is also being investigated by other federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the State Department of Health in Arizona.
Theranos Inc founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, once touted as the Steve Jobs of biotech for her company's innovative blood-testing technology, has been barred by a U.S. regulator from owning or operating a lab for at least two years.
Dealing the biggest blow yet to the privately held company, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services revoked a key certificate for its California lab and terminated the facility's approval to receive government payments.
Medicare is the government's medical insurance program for the elderly, while Medicaid is for the poor.
The sanctions, which also include an unspecified monetary penalty, come six months after the regulator sent a scathing letter to the company, saying its practices were jeopardizing patient health and safety.
Theranos said late on Thursday that it would continue to service its customers through its Arizona lab.
The company, once valued at $9 billion, was founded by Holmes in 2003 to develop an innovative blood testing device that would give quicker results using just one drop of blood.
However, its fortunes waned after the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles starting in October last year that suggested the devices were flawed and inaccurate.
Forbes magazine said last month that the company's value had fallen to about $800 million, while Holmes' own net worth had shrunk to zero from about $4.5 billion - a figure the magazine had said had made her the richest self-made woman in America.
"Everyone wanted her to succeed," Steve Brozak, president of WBB Securities, told Reuters, noting that the basic blood diagnostics sector has not had a significant advance in technology in 90 years.
Walgreens Boots Alliance terminated its relationship with the company last month and closed operations at all 40 Theranos Wellness Centers at its drug stores in Arizona.
Theranos is also facing a class action lawsuit filed in May accusing it of endangering customer health through "massive failures" that misrepresented test results.
The Palo Alto, California-based company is also being investigated by other federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the State Department of Health in Arizona.
Medicare's Managed Care Option Trades Off With Patient Preferences
CHICAGO - Medicare enrollees are moving in greater numbers than ever to the program's managed care option as a way to save money. But the tradeoff is much less ability to use their preferred doctors and hospitals.
Seniors can choose between traditional fee-for-service Medicare - which is accepted by most healthcare providers - or a Medicare Advantage plan. The latter encompasses health maintenance organizations (HMOs) or preferred provider organizations (PPOs), which control costs by creating healthcare provider networks that enrollees must use.
In theory, prospective Advantage enrollees can review lists of in-network providers before opting into a plan. But a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) finds that provider data often is very difficult to review, can be out of date and frequently contain inaccurate information.
KFF's review also found shortcomings in the quality of providers in some Medicare Advantage provider networks. One out of every five plans did not include a regional academic medical center - institutions which usually offer the highest quality care and top specialists. And only 40 percent of Advantage provider networks included top-quality cancer centers, as indicated by membership in the National Cancer Institute's network.
NCI-designated cancer centers offer cutting-edge treatments and tend to have greater access to clinical trials. They are especially important for patients with rare and advanced cancers, or other complicating conditions, said Gretchen Jacobson, KFF's associate director of the program on Medicare policy and co-author of the study.
The upshot: Medicare Advantage may be just fine if you are healthy, but problems may crop up if your healthcare needs become more complex and you have very specific healthcare provider preferences.
This year, 31 percent of Medicare enrollees are in Advantage plans, up from 11 percent in 2010. That number is expected to hit 41 percent by 2026, according to a forecast by the Congressional Budget Office.
When you sign up for Advantage, your Part B premium goes to the insurance company providing the plan. The largest providers are UnitedHealthcare, Humana Inc and Blue Cross Blue Shield.
One often hears critics claim that healthcare providers are bailing out of traditional Medicare in large numbers - but that is not actually the case. Last year, 14 percent of Medicare enrollees who were seeking a new primary care doctor reported major problems in finding a physician who would treat them, according to survey data from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent congressional agency. Among those seeking a new specialist, 6 percent reported major problems. In both cases, that represents 1 percent of the total Medicare population.
ADVANTAGES, PITFALLS
Advantage plans often offer extra benefits, such as health club memberships, vision care and some limited dental care. Cost-sharing is often lower, and many plans provide prescription drug coverage with no extra premium. "It can be very attractive to many seniors who are living on a fixed budget," Jacobson said.
The trade-off is limited provider networks - and the challenges prospective enrollees face in determining who they are allowed to see for healthcare, and who is off-limits. KFF reviewed 409 Advantage plans, including 307 HMOs and 102 PPOs. Researchers found provider directories often were riddled with errors, omissions and outdated information.
"There's no reason in this era of technology why this needs to be as difficult as it is," Jacobson said. "People should be able to simply tell the system who their doctors are, the illnesses they have, and get a recommendation for a plan that will work for them."
KFF also found that Advantage provider network quality differs significantly. For example, Los Angeles has three NCI-designated cancer centers. Most of the Advantage plans there do not include any of them, but one plan includes all three.
A report last year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which runs Medicare, needs to improve its oversight of Advantage plans to assure that provider networks are robust. The report also criticized CMS for doing too little to assess the accuracy of Advantage plan provider lists.
Even when Advantage enrollees are able to confirm participation by their healthcare providers, there is no guarantee that will continue. Advantage plans are free to add or drop health providers during the course of an enrollment season.
That became an especially hot issue in 2014 when UnitedHealthcare dropped providers who covered thousands of the insurer's patients, including the prominent Yale-New Haven Hospital system.
Democrats in Congress have proposed legislation that would prohibit Advantage plans from dropping providers without cause during the middle of an enrollment year.
Under current rules, plans must provide 30 days' notice to enrollees when providers are dropped. Enrollees who lose access to a provider can make a midyear plan change only under very limited circumstances. "You can do it only if you are receiving ongoing care from a provider that is terminated," Jacobson said. "Otherwise you need to wait until the next open enrollment period."
The annual enrollment period for Advantage and Part D prescription drug plans are held from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7 each year. At that point, a beneficiary could switch to a different Advantage plan, or shift back to traditional Medicare. But a serious diagnosis in January would leave you hamstrung until the following year.
Said Jacobson: "It can be a roll of the dice."
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)
CHICAGO - Medicare enrollees are moving in greater numbers than ever to the program's managed care option as a way to save money. But the tradeoff is much less ability to use their preferred doctors and hospitals.
Seniors can choose between traditional fee-for-service Medicare - which is accepted by most healthcare providers - or a Medicare Advantage plan. The latter encompasses health maintenance organizations (HMOs) or preferred provider organizations (PPOs), which control costs by creating healthcare provider networks that enrollees must use.
In theory, prospective Advantage enrollees can review lists of in-network providers before opting into a plan. But a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) finds that provider data often is very difficult to review, can be out of date and frequently contain inaccurate information.
KFF's review also found shortcomings in the quality of providers in some Medicare Advantage provider networks. One out of every five plans did not include a regional academic medical center - institutions which usually offer the highest quality care and top specialists. And only 40 percent of Advantage provider networks included top-quality cancer centers, as indicated by membership in the National Cancer Institute's network.
NCI-designated cancer centers offer cutting-edge treatments and tend to have greater access to clinical trials. They are especially important for patients with rare and advanced cancers, or other complicating conditions, said Gretchen Jacobson, KFF's associate director of the program on Medicare policy and co-author of the study.
The upshot: Medicare Advantage may be just fine if you are healthy, but problems may crop up if your healthcare needs become more complex and you have very specific healthcare provider preferences.
This year, 31 percent of Medicare enrollees are in Advantage plans, up from 11 percent in 2010. That number is expected to hit 41 percent by 2026, according to a forecast by the Congressional Budget Office.
When you sign up for Advantage, your Part B premium goes to the insurance company providing the plan. The largest providers are UnitedHealthcare, Humana Inc and Blue Cross Blue Shield.
One often hears critics claim that healthcare providers are bailing out of traditional Medicare in large numbers - but that is not actually the case. Last year, 14 percent of Medicare enrollees who were seeking a new primary care doctor reported major problems in finding a physician who would treat them, according to survey data from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent congressional agency. Among those seeking a new specialist, 6 percent reported major problems. In both cases, that represents 1 percent of the total Medicare population.
ADVANTAGES, PITFALLS
Advantage plans often offer extra benefits, such as health club memberships, vision care and some limited dental care. Cost-sharing is often lower, and many plans provide prescription drug coverage with no extra premium. "It can be very attractive to many seniors who are living on a fixed budget," Jacobson said.
The trade-off is limited provider networks - and the challenges prospective enrollees face in determining who they are allowed to see for healthcare, and who is off-limits. KFF reviewed 409 Advantage plans, including 307 HMOs and 102 PPOs. Researchers found provider directories often were riddled with errors, omissions and outdated information.
"There's no reason in this era of technology why this needs to be as difficult as it is," Jacobson said. "People should be able to simply tell the system who their doctors are, the illnesses they have, and get a recommendation for a plan that will work for them."
KFF also found that Advantage provider network quality differs significantly. For example, Los Angeles has three NCI-designated cancer centers. Most of the Advantage plans there do not include any of them, but one plan includes all three.
A report last year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which runs Medicare, needs to improve its oversight of Advantage plans to assure that provider networks are robust. The report also criticized CMS for doing too little to assess the accuracy of Advantage plan provider lists.
Even when Advantage enrollees are able to confirm participation by their healthcare providers, there is no guarantee that will continue. Advantage plans are free to add or drop health providers during the course of an enrollment season.
That became an especially hot issue in 2014 when UnitedHealthcare dropped providers who covered thousands of the insurer's patients, including the prominent Yale-New Haven Hospital system.
Democrats in Congress have proposed legislation that would prohibit Advantage plans from dropping providers without cause during the middle of an enrollment year.
Under current rules, plans must provide 30 days' notice to enrollees when providers are dropped. Enrollees who lose access to a provider can make a midyear plan change only under very limited circumstances. "You can do it only if you are receiving ongoing care from a provider that is terminated," Jacobson said. "Otherwise you need to wait until the next open enrollment period."
The annual enrollment period for Advantage and Part D prescription drug plans are held from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7 each year. At that point, a beneficiary could switch to a different Advantage plan, or shift back to traditional Medicare. But a serious diagnosis in January would leave you hamstrung until the following year.
Said Jacobson: "It can be a roll of the dice."
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)
CHICAGO - Medicare enrollees are moving in greater numbers than ever to the program's managed care option as a way to save money. But the tradeoff is much less ability to use their preferred doctors and hospitals.
Seniors can choose between traditional fee-for-service Medicare - which is accepted by most healthcare providers - or a Medicare Advantage plan. The latter encompasses health maintenance organizations (HMOs) or preferred provider organizations (PPOs), which control costs by creating healthcare provider networks that enrollees must use.
In theory, prospective Advantage enrollees can review lists of in-network providers before opting into a plan. But a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) finds that provider data often is very difficult to review, can be out of date and frequently contain inaccurate information.
KFF's review also found shortcomings in the quality of providers in some Medicare Advantage provider networks. One out of every five plans did not include a regional academic medical center - institutions which usually offer the highest quality care and top specialists. And only 40 percent of Advantage provider networks included top-quality cancer centers, as indicated by membership in the National Cancer Institute's network.
NCI-designated cancer centers offer cutting-edge treatments and tend to have greater access to clinical trials. They are especially important for patients with rare and advanced cancers, or other complicating conditions, said Gretchen Jacobson, KFF's associate director of the program on Medicare policy and co-author of the study.
The upshot: Medicare Advantage may be just fine if you are healthy, but problems may crop up if your healthcare needs become more complex and you have very specific healthcare provider preferences.
This year, 31 percent of Medicare enrollees are in Advantage plans, up from 11 percent in 2010. That number is expected to hit 41 percent by 2026, according to a forecast by the Congressional Budget Office.
When you sign up for Advantage, your Part B premium goes to the insurance company providing the plan. The largest providers are UnitedHealthcare, Humana Inc and Blue Cross Blue Shield.
One often hears critics claim that healthcare providers are bailing out of traditional Medicare in large numbers - but that is not actually the case. Last year, 14 percent of Medicare enrollees who were seeking a new primary care doctor reported major problems in finding a physician who would treat them, according to survey data from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent congressional agency. Among those seeking a new specialist, 6 percent reported major problems. In both cases, that represents 1 percent of the total Medicare population.
ADVANTAGES, PITFALLS
Advantage plans often offer extra benefits, such as health club memberships, vision care and some limited dental care. Cost-sharing is often lower, and many plans provide prescription drug coverage with no extra premium. "It can be very attractive to many seniors who are living on a fixed budget," Jacobson said.
The trade-off is limited provider networks - and the challenges prospective enrollees face in determining who they are allowed to see for healthcare, and who is off-limits. KFF reviewed 409 Advantage plans, including 307 HMOs and 102 PPOs. Researchers found provider directories often were riddled with errors, omissions and outdated information.
"There's no reason in this era of technology why this needs to be as difficult as it is," Jacobson said. "People should be able to simply tell the system who their doctors are, the illnesses they have, and get a recommendation for a plan that will work for them."
KFF also found that Advantage provider network quality differs significantly. For example, Los Angeles has three NCI-designated cancer centers. Most of the Advantage plans there do not include any of them, but one plan includes all three.
A report last year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which runs Medicare, needs to improve its oversight of Advantage plans to assure that provider networks are robust. The report also criticized CMS for doing too little to assess the accuracy of Advantage plan provider lists.
Even when Advantage enrollees are able to confirm participation by their healthcare providers, there is no guarantee that will continue. Advantage plans are free to add or drop health providers during the course of an enrollment season.
That became an especially hot issue in 2014 when UnitedHealthcare dropped providers who covered thousands of the insurer's patients, including the prominent Yale-New Haven Hospital system.
Democrats in Congress have proposed legislation that would prohibit Advantage plans from dropping providers without cause during the middle of an enrollment year.
Under current rules, plans must provide 30 days' notice to enrollees when providers are dropped. Enrollees who lose access to a provider can make a midyear plan change only under very limited circumstances. "You can do it only if you are receiving ongoing care from a provider that is terminated," Jacobson said. "Otherwise you need to wait until the next open enrollment period."
The annual enrollment period for Advantage and Part D prescription drug plans are held from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7 each year. At that point, a beneficiary could switch to a different Advantage plan, or shift back to traditional Medicare. But a serious diagnosis in January would leave you hamstrung until the following year.
Said Jacobson: "It can be a roll of the dice."
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)
Medical Marijuana Cuts Medicare Spending and May Reduce Dependency on Prescription Opioids
Physicians wrote significantly fewer prescriptions for painkillers and other medications for elderly and disabled patients who had legal access to medical marijuana, a new study finds.
In fact, Medicare saved more than $165 million in 2013 on prescription drugs in the District of Columbia and 17 states that allowed cannabis to be used as medicine, researchers calculated. If every state in the nation legalized medical marijuana, the study forecast that the federal program would save more than $468 million a year on pharmaceuticals for disabled Americans and those 65 and older.
No health insurance, including Medicare, will reimburse for the cost of marijuana. Although medical cannabis is legal today in 25 states and the District of Columbia, federal law continues to prohibit its prescription in all circumstances.
The new study, published July 6 in Health Affairs, was the first to ask if there's any evidence that medical marijuana is being used as medicine, said senior author W. David Bradford in a phone interview. The answer is yes, said Bradford, a health economist and a professor at the University of Georgia in Athens.
"When states turned on medical marijuana laws, we did see a rather substantial turn away from FDA-approved medicine," he said.
Researchers analyzed Medicare data from 2010 through 2013 for drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat nine ailments - from pain to depression and nausea - for which marijuana might be an alternative remedy.
They expected to see fewer prescriptions for FDA-approved drugs that might treat the same conditions as cannabis. Indeed, except for glaucoma, doctors wrote fewer prescriptions for all nine ailments after medical marijuana laws took effect, the study found.
The number of Medicare prescriptions significantly dropped for drugs that treat pain, depression, anxiety, nausea, psychoses, seizures and sleep disorders.
For pain, the annual number of daily doses prescribed per physician fell by more than 11 percent.
"The results show that marijuana might be beneficial with diverting people away from opioids," Bradford said.
A 2014 study found that opioid overdose death rates were on average nearly 25 percent lower in states where medical marijuana was legal compared to states where it remained illegal. Chronic or severe pain is considered a primary indicator for medical marijuana in most states where it is legal.
Nearly two million Americans either abused or were dependent on prescription opioids in 2014, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since 1999, more than 165,000 Americans have died from prescription opioid overdoses.
Addiction psychiatrist Dr. Kevin Hill questioned whether medical marijuana patients might in some cases be getting inferior or incorrect treatment, and if so, whether the resulting extra healthcare costs would overshadow the Medicare drug savings. Hill, a professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, was not involved in the new study.
"Fewer opioid prescriptions in medical marijuana states might be a good thing, but I am concerned about the overall quality of care delivered in medical marijuana specialty clinics," he told Reuters Health in an email.
He criticized the implementation of medical marijuana laws in many states as often leading to "medical care that is of poor quality."
Part of the problem stems from a dearth of research into the efficacy of medical marijuana.
Although California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, federal law enacted by Congress in 1970 continues to put cannabis in the same category as heroin, Schedule 1 of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, and finds it has no medicinal value. Consequently, research has been severely limited.
Sheigla Murphy, a medical sociologist who was not involved in the current study, praised it as a major contribution to the literature on the role of medical marijuana in older adults.
Murphy directs the Center for Substance Abuse Studies in San Francisco and has done prior research on marijuana and baby boomers. She said some older adults prefer marijuana to painkillers and sleeping pills.
"It fits with the problems of older age, problems with sleeping, depression, arthritis, worn-out body parts that begin to hurt. Marijuana can relieve these without the side effects of grogginess and worrying about addiction," she said.
"As we're trying to reduce the number of pain medications, I think marijuana would be a welcome addition to the pharmacopeia," she said. "The one thing we know is no one has ever died of it."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1lx2GBv
Health Affairs 2016.
Physicians wrote significantly fewer prescriptions for painkillers and other medications for elderly and disabled patients who had legal access to medical marijuana, a new study finds.
In fact, Medicare saved more than $165 million in 2013 on prescription drugs in the District of Columbia and 17 states that allowed cannabis to be used as medicine, researchers calculated. If every state in the nation legalized medical marijuana, the study forecast that the federal program would save more than $468 million a year on pharmaceuticals for disabled Americans and those 65 and older.
No health insurance, including Medicare, will reimburse for the cost of marijuana. Although medical cannabis is legal today in 25 states and the District of Columbia, federal law continues to prohibit its prescription in all circumstances.
The new study, published July 6 in Health Affairs, was the first to ask if there's any evidence that medical marijuana is being used as medicine, said senior author W. David Bradford in a phone interview. The answer is yes, said Bradford, a health economist and a professor at the University of Georgia in Athens.
"When states turned on medical marijuana laws, we did see a rather substantial turn away from FDA-approved medicine," he said.
Researchers analyzed Medicare data from 2010 through 2013 for drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat nine ailments - from pain to depression and nausea - for which marijuana might be an alternative remedy.
They expected to see fewer prescriptions for FDA-approved drugs that might treat the same conditions as cannabis. Indeed, except for glaucoma, doctors wrote fewer prescriptions for all nine ailments after medical marijuana laws took effect, the study found.
The number of Medicare prescriptions significantly dropped for drugs that treat pain, depression, anxiety, nausea, psychoses, seizures and sleep disorders.
For pain, the annual number of daily doses prescribed per physician fell by more than 11 percent.
"The results show that marijuana might be beneficial with diverting people away from opioids," Bradford said.
A 2014 study found that opioid overdose death rates were on average nearly 25 percent lower in states where medical marijuana was legal compared to states where it remained illegal. Chronic or severe pain is considered a primary indicator for medical marijuana in most states where it is legal.
Nearly two million Americans either abused or were dependent on prescription opioids in 2014, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since 1999, more than 165,000 Americans have died from prescription opioid overdoses.
Addiction psychiatrist Dr. Kevin Hill questioned whether medical marijuana patients might in some cases be getting inferior or incorrect treatment, and if so, whether the resulting extra healthcare costs would overshadow the Medicare drug savings. Hill, a professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, was not involved in the new study.
"Fewer opioid prescriptions in medical marijuana states might be a good thing, but I am concerned about the overall quality of care delivered in medical marijuana specialty clinics," he told Reuters Health in an email.
He criticized the implementation of medical marijuana laws in many states as often leading to "medical care that is of poor quality."
Part of the problem stems from a dearth of research into the efficacy of medical marijuana.
Although California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, federal law enacted by Congress in 1970 continues to put cannabis in the same category as heroin, Schedule 1 of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, and finds it has no medicinal value. Consequently, research has been severely limited.
Sheigla Murphy, a medical sociologist who was not involved in the current study, praised it as a major contribution to the literature on the role of medical marijuana in older adults.
Murphy directs the Center for Substance Abuse Studies in San Francisco and has done prior research on marijuana and baby boomers. She said some older adults prefer marijuana to painkillers and sleeping pills.
"It fits with the problems of older age, problems with sleeping, depression, arthritis, worn-out body parts that begin to hurt. Marijuana can relieve these without the side effects of grogginess and worrying about addiction," she said.
"As we're trying to reduce the number of pain medications, I think marijuana would be a welcome addition to the pharmacopeia," she said. "The one thing we know is no one has ever died of it."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1lx2GBv
Health Affairs 2016.
Physicians wrote significantly fewer prescriptions for painkillers and other medications for elderly and disabled patients who had legal access to medical marijuana, a new study finds.
In fact, Medicare saved more than $165 million in 2013 on prescription drugs in the District of Columbia and 17 states that allowed cannabis to be used as medicine, researchers calculated. If every state in the nation legalized medical marijuana, the study forecast that the federal program would save more than $468 million a year on pharmaceuticals for disabled Americans and those 65 and older.
No health insurance, including Medicare, will reimburse for the cost of marijuana. Although medical cannabis is legal today in 25 states and the District of Columbia, federal law continues to prohibit its prescription in all circumstances.
The new study, published July 6 in Health Affairs, was the first to ask if there's any evidence that medical marijuana is being used as medicine, said senior author W. David Bradford in a phone interview. The answer is yes, said Bradford, a health economist and a professor at the University of Georgia in Athens.
"When states turned on medical marijuana laws, we did see a rather substantial turn away from FDA-approved medicine," he said.
Researchers analyzed Medicare data from 2010 through 2013 for drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat nine ailments - from pain to depression and nausea - for which marijuana might be an alternative remedy.
They expected to see fewer prescriptions for FDA-approved drugs that might treat the same conditions as cannabis. Indeed, except for glaucoma, doctors wrote fewer prescriptions for all nine ailments after medical marijuana laws took effect, the study found.
The number of Medicare prescriptions significantly dropped for drugs that treat pain, depression, anxiety, nausea, psychoses, seizures and sleep disorders.
For pain, the annual number of daily doses prescribed per physician fell by more than 11 percent.
"The results show that marijuana might be beneficial with diverting people away from opioids," Bradford said.
A 2014 study found that opioid overdose death rates were on average nearly 25 percent lower in states where medical marijuana was legal compared to states where it remained illegal. Chronic or severe pain is considered a primary indicator for medical marijuana in most states where it is legal.
Nearly two million Americans either abused or were dependent on prescription opioids in 2014, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since 1999, more than 165,000 Americans have died from prescription opioid overdoses.
Addiction psychiatrist Dr. Kevin Hill questioned whether medical marijuana patients might in some cases be getting inferior or incorrect treatment, and if so, whether the resulting extra healthcare costs would overshadow the Medicare drug savings. Hill, a professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, was not involved in the new study.
"Fewer opioid prescriptions in medical marijuana states might be a good thing, but I am concerned about the overall quality of care delivered in medical marijuana specialty clinics," he told Reuters Health in an email.
He criticized the implementation of medical marijuana laws in many states as often leading to "medical care that is of poor quality."
Part of the problem stems from a dearth of research into the efficacy of medical marijuana.
Although California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, federal law enacted by Congress in 1970 continues to put cannabis in the same category as heroin, Schedule 1 of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, and finds it has no medicinal value. Consequently, research has been severely limited.
Sheigla Murphy, a medical sociologist who was not involved in the current study, praised it as a major contribution to the literature on the role of medical marijuana in older adults.
Murphy directs the Center for Substance Abuse Studies in San Francisco and has done prior research on marijuana and baby boomers. She said some older adults prefer marijuana to painkillers and sleeping pills.
"It fits with the problems of older age, problems with sleeping, depression, arthritis, worn-out body parts that begin to hurt. Marijuana can relieve these without the side effects of grogginess and worrying about addiction," she said.
"As we're trying to reduce the number of pain medications, I think marijuana would be a welcome addition to the pharmacopeia," she said. "The one thing we know is no one has ever died of it."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1lx2GBv
Health Affairs 2016.
US Completes "Largest Takedown" of Federal Health Insurance Fraud
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday that federal law enforcement officials have hit a milestone in 2016 by completing the "largest takedown ever" against defendants allegedly trying to defraud Medicare and other federal insurance programs.
The 2016 takedown involves 301 defendants and a loss amount of $900 million, the department said. That exceeds a record last year, when 243 defendants faced charges in a combined $712 million in losses.
Among the defendants charged in the takedown include two owners of a group of outpatient clinics and a patient recruiter who stand accused of filing $36 million in fraudulent claims for physical therapy and other services that were not medically necessary.
To find patients, the Justice Department alleges the clinic operators and the recruiter targeted poor drug addicts and offered them narcotics so they could bill them for services that were never provided.
Another case that was highlighted on Wednesday involved home health fraud. In that case, a doctor was indicted for billing $38 million for home health services that were not needed or ever provided.
The Justice Department said that about 50 percent of the cases in the 2016 take down involve some form of home health fraud, and about 25 percent involve pharmacy fraud.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday that federal law enforcement officials have hit a milestone in 2016 by completing the "largest takedown ever" against defendants allegedly trying to defraud Medicare and other federal insurance programs.
The 2016 takedown involves 301 defendants and a loss amount of $900 million, the department said. That exceeds a record last year, when 243 defendants faced charges in a combined $712 million in losses.
Among the defendants charged in the takedown include two owners of a group of outpatient clinics and a patient recruiter who stand accused of filing $36 million in fraudulent claims for physical therapy and other services that were not medically necessary.
To find patients, the Justice Department alleges the clinic operators and the recruiter targeted poor drug addicts and offered them narcotics so they could bill them for services that were never provided.
Another case that was highlighted on Wednesday involved home health fraud. In that case, a doctor was indicted for billing $38 million for home health services that were not needed or ever provided.
The Justice Department said that about 50 percent of the cases in the 2016 take down involve some form of home health fraud, and about 25 percent involve pharmacy fraud.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday that federal law enforcement officials have hit a milestone in 2016 by completing the "largest takedown ever" against defendants allegedly trying to defraud Medicare and other federal insurance programs.
The 2016 takedown involves 301 defendants and a loss amount of $900 million, the department said. That exceeds a record last year, when 243 defendants faced charges in a combined $712 million in losses.
Among the defendants charged in the takedown include two owners of a group of outpatient clinics and a patient recruiter who stand accused of filing $36 million in fraudulent claims for physical therapy and other services that were not medically necessary.
To find patients, the Justice Department alleges the clinic operators and the recruiter targeted poor drug addicts and offered them narcotics so they could bill them for services that were never provided.
Another case that was highlighted on Wednesday involved home health fraud. In that case, a doctor was indicted for billing $38 million for home health services that were not needed or ever provided.
The Justice Department said that about 50 percent of the cases in the 2016 take down involve some form of home health fraud, and about 25 percent involve pharmacy fraud.
MACRA Rule Offers Little Clarity for Hospitalists
Last year, Congress put an end to the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), which had become a yearly battle fought on behalf of and by physicians to prevent significant last-minute cuts to Medicare reimbursement. Many hoped its replacement would provide more stability and certainty.
However, that replacement, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), has been anything but clear. On April 27, 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in what it called a “first step” in implementing MACRA. CMS accepted feedback and input on the proposed rule through June 27, 2016.
The Society of Hospital Medicine worked to provide comment on what it sees as the biggest concerns of hospitalists.
For example, it remains unclear what quality markers CMS will use to evaluate hospitalists under MACRA, says Rush University Medical Center’s Suparna Dutta, MD, MPH, a hospitalist, assistant professor of medicine, and member of the SHM Public Policy Committee (PPC). “The biggest piece is, what will be used universally for all hospitalists and attributed to the work that we do?”
MACRA represents “a milestone” in efforts to “advance a healthcare system that rewards better care, smarter spending, and healthier people,” U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell said in a statement issued the day the proposed rule was announced.
What it is designed to do, says Ron Greeno, MD, MHM, president-elect of SHM, PPC chair, and senior advisor for medical affairs at TeamHealth, is push physicians to move toward alternative payment models.
To achieve this, MACRA creates a framework called the Quality Payment Program, which offers physicians two paths for value-over-volume-based payments: MIPS, for Merit-Based Incentive Payment System, and APMs, for Advanced Alternative Payment Models. The benchmark period for both pathways begins Jan. 1, 2017, and MACRA reimbursement would begin Jan. 1, 2019.
Under MIPS, current quality measurement programs are streamlined into a single payment adjustment, including the Physician Value-Based Modifier, the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program and the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS).
Physicians will not assume risk on the MIPS pathway, but payment adjustments will be based on their MIPS score, which grows each year through 2022 and ranges that year from +9% to -9%. It will be budget neutral: The top half of scorers will see increases in payments, while the bottom half will see cuts. Additional adjustments will be given to top performers through 2024.
However, as Dr. Dutta and fellow PPC member Lauren Doctoroff, MD, FHM, a hospitalist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and instructor at Harvard Medical School, wrote for The Hospitalist in March 2016, it is not yet clear how MIPS scores will be calculated for hospitalists.
“The problem is that there is not a typical hospitalist in terms of the work that we do,” Dr. Dutta says. “It depends on the hospital and the types of responsibilities the hospitalists have and the types of patients they care for.”
CMS says 50% of the MIPS score will come from six reported measures that reflect different specialties and practices; 25% will come from technology use, with a focus on interoperability and information exchange; 15% will come from clinical improvement practices, like care coordination; and 10% will be based on cost, chosen from among 40 episode-specific measures.
The new hospitalist billing code, which has not yet been implemented, should be a tremendous help under MACRA, Dr. Dutta says. “As CMS plans on using peer-comparison groups for quality and cost measures, it is really important that we now have a specialty billing code for hospitalists, which should ensure we have a fair and valid comparison pool for any metrics we are measured on for MIPS.”
The second path may be much harder for hospitalists to achieve since it requires that physicians share in risk and reward and participate in alternative payment models like Next Generation ACO or the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus model.
Most hospitalists will not be candidates for taking on risks under APM since physicians need to achieve a threshold for taking on more than nominal financial risk, Dr. Dutta says, noting SHM’s efforts to better understand the implications.
“It depends on the the percentage of patients you’re seeing in an APM, and you might hit your threshold if your market has a lot of Medicare ACOs or risk-sharing, but it’s not something hospitalists can consistently plan on,” Dr. Dutta says.
Most hospitalists have little control over whether their facility participates in an APM, Dr. Dutta says, but allowing the APM to which a patient belongs count toward the care provided by hospitalists—though a patient may align with several APMs—may help reach these thresholds.
Feedback from SHM to CMS also included asking to allow the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative (BPCI) to qualify for APM and seeking clarification into whether hospitalists can tap into cost and quality metrics hospitals are already reporting to CMS.
“Hospitals are collecting a certain amount of data because they have to for Medicare, and that might be a good indicator of what hospitalists are doing,” Dr. Dutta says. This includes services like DVT prophylaxis after surgery in hospitals where hospitalists provide a majority of post-operative care or safety measures like CLABSI (central line–associated bloodstream infection) rates.
To stay up to date with MACRA, visit SHM’s MACRA website and follow @SHMadvocacy on Twitter. TH
Corrected version July 13, 2016.
Kelly April Tyrrell is a freelance writer in Madison, Wis.
Last year, Congress put an end to the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), which had become a yearly battle fought on behalf of and by physicians to prevent significant last-minute cuts to Medicare reimbursement. Many hoped its replacement would provide more stability and certainty.
However, that replacement, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), has been anything but clear. On April 27, 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in what it called a “first step” in implementing MACRA. CMS accepted feedback and input on the proposed rule through June 27, 2016.
The Society of Hospital Medicine worked to provide comment on what it sees as the biggest concerns of hospitalists.
For example, it remains unclear what quality markers CMS will use to evaluate hospitalists under MACRA, says Rush University Medical Center’s Suparna Dutta, MD, MPH, a hospitalist, assistant professor of medicine, and member of the SHM Public Policy Committee (PPC). “The biggest piece is, what will be used universally for all hospitalists and attributed to the work that we do?”
MACRA represents “a milestone” in efforts to “advance a healthcare system that rewards better care, smarter spending, and healthier people,” U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell said in a statement issued the day the proposed rule was announced.
What it is designed to do, says Ron Greeno, MD, MHM, president-elect of SHM, PPC chair, and senior advisor for medical affairs at TeamHealth, is push physicians to move toward alternative payment models.
To achieve this, MACRA creates a framework called the Quality Payment Program, which offers physicians two paths for value-over-volume-based payments: MIPS, for Merit-Based Incentive Payment System, and APMs, for Advanced Alternative Payment Models. The benchmark period for both pathways begins Jan. 1, 2017, and MACRA reimbursement would begin Jan. 1, 2019.
Under MIPS, current quality measurement programs are streamlined into a single payment adjustment, including the Physician Value-Based Modifier, the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program and the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS).
Physicians will not assume risk on the MIPS pathway, but payment adjustments will be based on their MIPS score, which grows each year through 2022 and ranges that year from +9% to -9%. It will be budget neutral: The top half of scorers will see increases in payments, while the bottom half will see cuts. Additional adjustments will be given to top performers through 2024.
However, as Dr. Dutta and fellow PPC member Lauren Doctoroff, MD, FHM, a hospitalist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and instructor at Harvard Medical School, wrote for The Hospitalist in March 2016, it is not yet clear how MIPS scores will be calculated for hospitalists.
“The problem is that there is not a typical hospitalist in terms of the work that we do,” Dr. Dutta says. “It depends on the hospital and the types of responsibilities the hospitalists have and the types of patients they care for.”
CMS says 50% of the MIPS score will come from six reported measures that reflect different specialties and practices; 25% will come from technology use, with a focus on interoperability and information exchange; 15% will come from clinical improvement practices, like care coordination; and 10% will be based on cost, chosen from among 40 episode-specific measures.
The new hospitalist billing code, which has not yet been implemented, should be a tremendous help under MACRA, Dr. Dutta says. “As CMS plans on using peer-comparison groups for quality and cost measures, it is really important that we now have a specialty billing code for hospitalists, which should ensure we have a fair and valid comparison pool for any metrics we are measured on for MIPS.”
The second path may be much harder for hospitalists to achieve since it requires that physicians share in risk and reward and participate in alternative payment models like Next Generation ACO or the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus model.
Most hospitalists will not be candidates for taking on risks under APM since physicians need to achieve a threshold for taking on more than nominal financial risk, Dr. Dutta says, noting SHM’s efforts to better understand the implications.
“It depends on the the percentage of patients you’re seeing in an APM, and you might hit your threshold if your market has a lot of Medicare ACOs or risk-sharing, but it’s not something hospitalists can consistently plan on,” Dr. Dutta says.
Most hospitalists have little control over whether their facility participates in an APM, Dr. Dutta says, but allowing the APM to which a patient belongs count toward the care provided by hospitalists—though a patient may align with several APMs—may help reach these thresholds.
Feedback from SHM to CMS also included asking to allow the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative (BPCI) to qualify for APM and seeking clarification into whether hospitalists can tap into cost and quality metrics hospitals are already reporting to CMS.
“Hospitals are collecting a certain amount of data because they have to for Medicare, and that might be a good indicator of what hospitalists are doing,” Dr. Dutta says. This includes services like DVT prophylaxis after surgery in hospitals where hospitalists provide a majority of post-operative care or safety measures like CLABSI (central line–associated bloodstream infection) rates.
To stay up to date with MACRA, visit SHM’s MACRA website and follow @SHMadvocacy on Twitter. TH
Corrected version July 13, 2016.
Kelly April Tyrrell is a freelance writer in Madison, Wis.
Last year, Congress put an end to the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), which had become a yearly battle fought on behalf of and by physicians to prevent significant last-minute cuts to Medicare reimbursement. Many hoped its replacement would provide more stability and certainty.
However, that replacement, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), has been anything but clear. On April 27, 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in what it called a “first step” in implementing MACRA. CMS accepted feedback and input on the proposed rule through June 27, 2016.
The Society of Hospital Medicine worked to provide comment on what it sees as the biggest concerns of hospitalists.
For example, it remains unclear what quality markers CMS will use to evaluate hospitalists under MACRA, says Rush University Medical Center’s Suparna Dutta, MD, MPH, a hospitalist, assistant professor of medicine, and member of the SHM Public Policy Committee (PPC). “The biggest piece is, what will be used universally for all hospitalists and attributed to the work that we do?”
MACRA represents “a milestone” in efforts to “advance a healthcare system that rewards better care, smarter spending, and healthier people,” U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell said in a statement issued the day the proposed rule was announced.
What it is designed to do, says Ron Greeno, MD, MHM, president-elect of SHM, PPC chair, and senior advisor for medical affairs at TeamHealth, is push physicians to move toward alternative payment models.
To achieve this, MACRA creates a framework called the Quality Payment Program, which offers physicians two paths for value-over-volume-based payments: MIPS, for Merit-Based Incentive Payment System, and APMs, for Advanced Alternative Payment Models. The benchmark period for both pathways begins Jan. 1, 2017, and MACRA reimbursement would begin Jan. 1, 2019.
Under MIPS, current quality measurement programs are streamlined into a single payment adjustment, including the Physician Value-Based Modifier, the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program and the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS).
Physicians will not assume risk on the MIPS pathway, but payment adjustments will be based on their MIPS score, which grows each year through 2022 and ranges that year from +9% to -9%. It will be budget neutral: The top half of scorers will see increases in payments, while the bottom half will see cuts. Additional adjustments will be given to top performers through 2024.
However, as Dr. Dutta and fellow PPC member Lauren Doctoroff, MD, FHM, a hospitalist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and instructor at Harvard Medical School, wrote for The Hospitalist in March 2016, it is not yet clear how MIPS scores will be calculated for hospitalists.
“The problem is that there is not a typical hospitalist in terms of the work that we do,” Dr. Dutta says. “It depends on the hospital and the types of responsibilities the hospitalists have and the types of patients they care for.”
CMS says 50% of the MIPS score will come from six reported measures that reflect different specialties and practices; 25% will come from technology use, with a focus on interoperability and information exchange; 15% will come from clinical improvement practices, like care coordination; and 10% will be based on cost, chosen from among 40 episode-specific measures.
The new hospitalist billing code, which has not yet been implemented, should be a tremendous help under MACRA, Dr. Dutta says. “As CMS plans on using peer-comparison groups for quality and cost measures, it is really important that we now have a specialty billing code for hospitalists, which should ensure we have a fair and valid comparison pool for any metrics we are measured on for MIPS.”
The second path may be much harder for hospitalists to achieve since it requires that physicians share in risk and reward and participate in alternative payment models like Next Generation ACO or the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus model.
Most hospitalists will not be candidates for taking on risks under APM since physicians need to achieve a threshold for taking on more than nominal financial risk, Dr. Dutta says, noting SHM’s efforts to better understand the implications.
“It depends on the the percentage of patients you’re seeing in an APM, and you might hit your threshold if your market has a lot of Medicare ACOs or risk-sharing, but it’s not something hospitalists can consistently plan on,” Dr. Dutta says.
Most hospitalists have little control over whether their facility participates in an APM, Dr. Dutta says, but allowing the APM to which a patient belongs count toward the care provided by hospitalists—though a patient may align with several APMs—may help reach these thresholds.
Feedback from SHM to CMS also included asking to allow the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative (BPCI) to qualify for APM and seeking clarification into whether hospitalists can tap into cost and quality metrics hospitals are already reporting to CMS.
“Hospitals are collecting a certain amount of data because they have to for Medicare, and that might be a good indicator of what hospitalists are doing,” Dr. Dutta says. This includes services like DVT prophylaxis after surgery in hospitals where hospitalists provide a majority of post-operative care or safety measures like CLABSI (central line–associated bloodstream infection) rates.
To stay up to date with MACRA, visit SHM’s MACRA website and follow @SHMadvocacy on Twitter. TH
Corrected version July 13, 2016.
Kelly April Tyrrell is a freelance writer in Madison, Wis.
Key Medicare Fund Could Exhaust Reserves in 2028: Trustees
WASHINGTON—The U.S. federal program that pays elderly Americans' hospital bills will exhaust reserves in 2028, two years sooner than last year's estimate, trustees of the program said on Wednesday.
In their annual financial review, the trustees also said that the combined Social Security and disability trust fund reserves are estimated to run out in 2034, the same projection as last year.
The Medicare program's trust fund for hospital care is still scheduled to have sufficient funding 11 years longer than the estimate given before the Affordable Care Act was passed, the trustees said.
They put the shortening of the timeline down to changes in estimates of income and cost, particularly in the near term.
A depletion in funds available for Medicare and Social Security does not mean the programs would suddenly stop. At the current rate of payroll tax collections, Medicare would be able to cover 87 percent of costs in 2028. This would fall to 79 percent by 2043 and then gradually increase.
Social Security would be able to pay about three-quarters of scheduled benefits from 2034 to 2090, the trustees said.
WASHINGTON—The U.S. federal program that pays elderly Americans' hospital bills will exhaust reserves in 2028, two years sooner than last year's estimate, trustees of the program said on Wednesday.
In their annual financial review, the trustees also said that the combined Social Security and disability trust fund reserves are estimated to run out in 2034, the same projection as last year.
The Medicare program's trust fund for hospital care is still scheduled to have sufficient funding 11 years longer than the estimate given before the Affordable Care Act was passed, the trustees said.
They put the shortening of the timeline down to changes in estimates of income and cost, particularly in the near term.
A depletion in funds available for Medicare and Social Security does not mean the programs would suddenly stop. At the current rate of payroll tax collections, Medicare would be able to cover 87 percent of costs in 2028. This would fall to 79 percent by 2043 and then gradually increase.
Social Security would be able to pay about three-quarters of scheduled benefits from 2034 to 2090, the trustees said.
WASHINGTON—The U.S. federal program that pays elderly Americans' hospital bills will exhaust reserves in 2028, two years sooner than last year's estimate, trustees of the program said on Wednesday.
In their annual financial review, the trustees also said that the combined Social Security and disability trust fund reserves are estimated to run out in 2034, the same projection as last year.
The Medicare program's trust fund for hospital care is still scheduled to have sufficient funding 11 years longer than the estimate given before the Affordable Care Act was passed, the trustees said.
They put the shortening of the timeline down to changes in estimates of income and cost, particularly in the near term.
A depletion in funds available for Medicare and Social Security does not mean the programs would suddenly stop. At the current rate of payroll tax collections, Medicare would be able to cover 87 percent of costs in 2028. This would fall to 79 percent by 2043 and then gradually increase.
Social Security would be able to pay about three-quarters of scheduled benefits from 2034 to 2090, the trustees said.