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Grassley Criticizes Removal of Doctor Discipline Data

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By PIA CHRISTENSEN

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter today to the Health Resources and Services Administration, criticizing its decision to remove a public version of the National Practitioner Data Bank, which has helped reporters and researchers to expose serious gaps in the oversight of physicians.

“Shutting down public access to the data bank undermines the critical mission of identifying inefficiencies within our health care system – particularly at the expense of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries,” Grassley wrote to HRSA Administrator Mary Wakefield. “More transparency serves the public interest.”

Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, continued: “Generally speaking, except in cases of national security, the public’s business ought to be public. Providers receive billions of dollars in state and federal tax dollars to serve Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. Accountability requires tracking how the money is spent.”

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Suit Says Test Labs Cheat Medicare, Medicaid

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By MERRILL GOOZNER

Despite recent court settlements that recouped more than a quarter billion dollars from lab-test companies for allegedly overbilling California’s Medicaid program, the federal government seems to be ignoring similar schemes that drain Medicare coffers.

The cases involve the nation’s two largest medical laboratory-testing companies – Laboratory Corporation of America and Quest Diagnostics – that together control about half the annual $25 billion lab test market. The Medicare suits, filed in federal court in Manhattan by a former industry executive, claim the testing companies charged insurers like UnitedHealthcare unprofitably low rates while squeezing Medicare and Medicaid.

The whistleblower suits allege the schemes relied on sweetheart deals in which managed-care companies required in-network physicians to send their patients’ lab tests to a single testing company. As part of the deal for below-cost prices, the insurance companies allegedly promised to encourage physicians in their networks also to send Medicare and Medicaid patients to the same testing company, which then billed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (the federal agency that oversees both programs) or state Medicaid agencies at significantly higher rates.

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We Should Use Both Medicare Advantage for All and Medicaid As A Package to Cover Everyone And We Should Do It Now

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BY GEORGE HALVORSON

A growing number of people want to set aside all of our current health care financing approaches as a country and set up Medicare For All as a Canadian like single payer system to cover every American and pay for our care.

When we spend three trillion dollars a year on health care and still have thirty million people without insurance, the possibility of covering everyone using the most direct and simple approach has some obvious appeal.

That Medicare for All approach being proposed to Congress today would be funded with a half dozen taxes that would include making income tax more progressive and inheritance tax levels significantly higher than they are now.

If we do have enough political momentum and enough alignment as a nation to actually replace everything in our health coverage world with a national Medicare for All system that is financed by those new taxes, then we should seriously consider going even further and spend the same amount of money buying better coverage and better care for everyone by setting up a Medicare Advantage program for Everyone and using that approach and program to cover all Americans.

Medicare Advantage has better benefits, better care coordination, better quality reporting, and a higher level of focus on better care outcomes and better care connectivity than standard Medicare.

Standard Medicare buys care entirely by the piece.   Buying care entirely by the piece rewards bad care, bad care outcomes, bad health, and inefficient care connectivity.

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Steal From the Poor. Give to the Rich. Rinse. Repeat. The Tax Bill and Health Care Part II..

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By STEVEN FINDLAY

“We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit. Frankly it’s the health-care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt…that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”

— Paul Ryan, Dec. 6, 2017 on a talk radio show.

Amazing. You have to give Ryan credit for consistency and a kind of brutal Republican honesty.   Within weeks of pushing a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, he’s basically saying Republicans plan to pay for that by making cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Ryan’s “Roadmap for America” laid it all out in 2008: privatize Social Security, transform Medicare into a premium support plan, and block grant Medicaid.

Of course, Ryan is correct about these programs from a “fiscally-speaking” point of view.   The three do make up the lion’s share of the federal budget and their current rate of growth is unsustainable. Come 2035 and beyond they would start to gobble up almost the whole federal budget. The three programs will comprise about 50 percent of the $4.1 trillion federal budget in 2018.

And here’s a whooping number for you: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will cost the government $28 trillion through 2027.

But let’s be very clear about what is happening now that could set a dangerous precedent for the future. The Republican-led House and Senate, with the support of the Trump administration, have passed tax reform bills that primarily cut taxes for corporations and people making over $150,000 a year.

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Which Is More Efficient: Employer-Sponsored Insurance or Medicaid?

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By SAURABH JHA, MD

An old disagreement between Uwe Reinhardt and Sally Pipes in Forbes is a teachable moment. There’s a dearth of confrontational debates in health policy and education is worse off for it.

Crux of the issue is the more efficient system: employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) or Medicaid. Sally Pipes, president of the market-leaning Pacific Research Institute, believes it is ESI. Employers spend 60% less than the government, per person: $3,430 versus $9,130, per person (according to the American Health Policy Institute). Seems like a no brainer.

Pipes credits “consumerist and market-friendly approaches to health insurance” for the efficiencies. She blames “fraud,” “improper payment,” and “waste” for problems in government-run components of health care.

But Uwe Reinhardt, economist at Princeton, counters that Medicaid appears inefficient because of the risk composition of its enrollees. Put simply, Medicaid recipients are sicker. Sicker patients use more health care resources. Econ 101.

The points of tension in their disagreement are instructive.

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Death and Medicaid

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By ANISH KOKA, MD

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I remember 7 South at the Children’s hospital very well. I remember the distinctive smell, the large rooms, the friendly nurses, and Shantel. For a brief period of time, Shantel and her little boy – a too skinny child named James – were there every time I was there with my little girl. 7 South was the GI floor – Shantel and I were there because our children had the same dastardly liver disease that, for the time being, was winning. And that was it. We had nothing else in common.

She grew up in North Philadelphia, not far from where I was finishing a residency program in Internal Medicine. She had three other children, was a single mother, and in the year that I spent shuttling to the hospital I never saw the father of her child. Shantel did not work, and relied almost exclusively on the welfare programs to make life work.

I was a medical resident, our family had a combined income north of $150,000/ year, and our health insurance was through my employer. My wife and I worked, which meant that we had the flexibility for one of us to stop working, and still maintain our benefits.Continue reading…

Senate Releases Obamacare Replacement Bill (Download)

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BY THCB STAFF

With action expected on the legislation next week, the Senate released the full text of its proposed Obamacare replacement.

Surprise, surprise: after weeks of secret meetings and dramatic late night tweets, the legislation looks very similar to the House Bill. More soon.

[pdf-embedder url=”https://thehealthcareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/SENATEHEALTHCARE.pdf”]

 

 

 

The Positive Impact of New Wage Protections on Home Health Agency Bottom Lines

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By JEFFREY GROSSMAN

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In January 2016, the Department of Labor (DOL) officially extended federal wage protections to home care workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act, entitling them to the federal minimum wage, time-and-a-half pay for overtime, and pay for time spent traveling between clients. Predictably, lobbyist groups working on behalf of home care agencies have petitioned the Supreme Court to upend the new regulation. Their petition currently sits in limbo while the eight-member Court delays its’ consideration (presumably in fear of an unproductive 4-4 voting split while awaiting the confirmation of a ninth Justice). In the interim, those hoping for a review should consider the positive impacts of the new regulation and the opportunities it presents.

While on the surface this unfunded government mandate hurts home health agencies struggling to offer care within already slim Medicaid reimbursement margins, there is also a business case for increasing wages. First, increased wages will help entice new workers to the field, enabling agencies to care for more patients. Presently the median hourly wage for home care workers is $9.38[1], compared to the median for refuse collectors at $15.52 and parking enforcement workers at $16.99. While caregivers are often driven by a passion for their work, relatively low wages force many to look elsewhere. With higher pay, agencies should see an immediate impact on their ability to recruit new employees and increase revenue through improved bandwidth.

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More Than Adequate

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By KOFI JONES

CMS recently unveiled a massive regulatory overhaul of Medicaid managed care requirements. Despite the fact that it’s being called a “mega-reg,” and taking some heat for its 1400+ page size, there’s certainly some interesting reading contained within, particularly for the telehealth community.

It’s all about network adequacy standards.

Health plans are regulated by states or CMS and measured based on their ability to demonstrate the adequacy of their in-network providers. How many are there? What’s the availability by specialty? Do consumers understand which providers are in-network? What does access look like in terms of wait times and distance? Answering these questions are the key to meeting the standard.

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2014 A Healthcare Odyssey

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By SAURABH JHA, MD 

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It might have been the best of times. It could have been the worst of times. But 2014 turned out to be the most mediocre of times. Here’s a recap.

Why did Sebelius resign?

Never make a promise to your kids that you can’t keep. And never project the number of people who will sign up for the exchanges and change your mind, unless you are the CBO. If you have read about the problem of uninsured in the US you might have considered CBO’s original projection that seven million people will sign up on the exchanges within six months of open enrollment a tad conservative. Weren’t there millions and millions, forty million apparently, gagging for healthcare coverage?

The CBO revised the projection to six million in February with the projection date of March 31st coming tantalizingly close. Towards the end of March you could hear the cheers of “roll baby, enroll” getting louder.

On April Fools’ Day, the ACA remained intact, the country had not descended in to civil war and some eight million had signed up for Obamacare.

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