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Tag: Obamacare

Healthcare’s Fake News Epidemic

Fake news has replaced responsible journalism. It’s hard to know what to believe. It wasn’t long ago that supermarket tabloids like National Enquirer were considered fake news. Now it seems the Enquirer and TMZ may be more reliable sources of accurate news than the New York Times or Washington Post.

Government agencies aren’t immune from the fake news trend either. The Congressional Budget Office describes itself as, “Strictly nonpartisan; conducts objective, impartial analysis; and hires its employees solely on the basis of professional competence without regard to political affiliation.”

I’ll bet most newspapers and television news networks say the same about their own objectivity.

The CBO analyzed the American Health Care Act of 2017, a lame effort by Republicans to repeal and replace Obamacare.  Passed by the House, it’s now on to “the greatest deliberative body in the world.”

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Senate Releases Obamacare Replacement Bill (Download)

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”]

 

 

 

Jimmy Kimmel Left Out Some Important Stuff About Obamacare

Late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel, in a recent opening monologue, spoke tearfully of his newborn son Billy, born with a serious congenital heart defect.  Heart defects in newborns, while uncommon, occur in 1 in 100 births.  The more serious ones, meaning those needing surgery in the first year, represent about a quarter of all congenital heart defects.

Jimmy’s son fell into the latter category, with Tetralogy of Fallot, bad plumbing in the heart, causing oxygen-poor blood to circulate out into the body without picking up a fresh supply of oxygen from the lungs.  Hence the newborn baby turning blue.

I have firsthand experience with this, as my youngest son was born with the same heart defect.  He needed surgery as an infant and then two additional open heart procedures before reaching adulthood.  I have walked in Jimmy Kimmel’s shoes and understand exactly what he is feeling – terror, anguish, guilt, helplessness, and hopelessness.

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Dancing on the Grave of Obamacare: Questions

I hate to interrupt the festivities, but I have a few questions. There are one or two little unknowns here. The answers to these questions are matters of life and death to many in the industry, literal life and death to many thousands of patients, organizational life and death to thousands of companies, hospitals and systems. 

Tuesday’s extraordinary events obviously present an enormous challenge for anyone who wants to think about the future of healthcare. The challenge is far more than simply trying to imagine the healthcare industry without Obamacare, or under whatever Trumpcare will turn out to be. A much more powerful effect will be come into play far earlier: the uncertainty over that future will have reshape the industry before we even get to the actual “repeal and replace” part.

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No, I Didn’t Expect That Either.
What’s Next?

As a Democrat, I can only hope this is a Dewey defeats Truman moment, but at 2.00am ET on Nov 9, President Trump with a Republican House and a open Supreme Court seat seems to be our new reality. For the health care establishment, this is a bombshell. It’s been easy for Congressional Republicans to vote to repeal the ACA when they knew Obama would veto it. But what happens next when Trump is happy to sign the “repeal”?

It’s hard to figure out what’s there in terms of putting together to “replace” either in the Congressional Republicans or in what passes for policy in what passes for the Trump camp. As Margalit Gur-Aire said on THCB recently other than one speech with some stale talking points about block grants for Medicaid and selling insurance across state lines, Trump seems to have no ideas about health care. (To be fair he doesn’t seem to have any ideas about anything, or he claims they’re a secret).

Then we have the issue of his relationship with Congress. Now he’s President he may declare a truce, but then again he might decide to tweet into oblivion Paul Ryan and the many others who wouldn’t support him. And he might of course self-immolate as he tries to manage his business, his relationship with Russia and his soon to be launched TV network–while actually having to be President.

But if he’s going to end Obamacare, Trump is going to have to worry about two things. First, he has said that he wants to repeal it but is going to make sure everyone can buy health insurance, even if they have preconditions. When the middle aged white working class who voted for Trump discover that their Medicaid and their health insurance goes away, and that insurers wont sell them insurance if they’re not a good risk, they might be unhappy.

Second, the other people who are going to be unhappy are the health care industry stakeholders. Health care is a series of complex legislative and market interactions. As a consequence of the ACA, most health insurers, providers and even pharma or device companies have made huge changes to their business strategy. Those business strategies and investment are now six years old. Like Wall Street and corporate America, Trump is going to make the health care establishment deeply uncomfortable. The question is, once big pharma, insurers and providers lean on the Administration, will anything actually change, or will we see the route towards value-based care continue?

Not only that, but the sea-change that is just starting in the shift from FFS to value-based payments from Medicare & CMS is underway because the country can’t afford continued health care cost growth. That remains the same. Eventually that reality will impinge even on a Trump administration.

So what happens next? Well it’s amateur hour and we’ve all failed to predict it thus far, so it’ll be tough to do it now. But health care will be a sideshow.

Oh, and time to repeal the frigging electoral college.

There’s a Story Behind the “Craziest Thing in the World”

screen-shot-2016-10-04-at-12-39-26-pmIs he on or off message — or what?  We are taking about Bill Clinton, who said in a speech today/yesterday that small business folks and individuals were “getting killed” by Obamacare….with “premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.”  

“The people who are getting killed in this deal are the small businesspeople and individuals who make just a little too much to get in on these subsidies,” Clinton said. He added that for many people, Obamacare’s changes have meant “their premiums doubled and their coverage [was] cut in half.”

Ouch.  But then he went on to say that one solution is to allow Americans to buy into Medicare, as Hillary has proposed.   We’re not sure if she’d be pissed or pleased with these remarks.  Perhaps not bad to let Bill signal her awareness that things with the exchanges are not good, and that she might be open to bigger changes in the program than she’s owned up to so far.

Aetna’s Obamacare Surprise

Screen Shot 2016-08-21 at 10.41.37 AMDid Aetna just pull a nasty, Trump-like move and up the ante on the Obamacare debate in advance of the election and exchange open enrollment for 2017?

The allegation is that the company withdrew from 11 state insurance exchange marketplaces for 2017 after the Justice Department failed to heed Aetna’s warning that it would do so if Justice didn’t approve its $37 billion purchase of Humana.  The Justice Department announced last month that it was challenging that deal and Anthem’s proposed merger with Cigna, saying both deals threaten to sharply reduce competition in the health insurance marketplace.

A July 2016 letter from Aetna to Justice, unearthed by Huffington Post, contains the threat.   But in announcing its exchange pullback this past week, Aetna made no mention of the letter and insisted its action was prompted by existing and expected future financial losses in the exchanges.

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Engaging Responsibly In the Health Care Debate

flying cadeuciiWith no apology offered, I will be venturing into a very subjective realm, namely, a characterization of today’s healthcare dialogue and what, in my opinion, might be an improvement.

I would suggest we have fallen into the trap that was partly enhanced by email and blogs, namely, that we can say outrageous things impolitely and without consequence.  With email we tend to be much blunter and impolite than we would be face to face.  On blogs, we can be positively toxic.  It’s like driving in a car with a tinted windshield that no one can see through.  You are anonymous and therefore can act less responsibly.

Another vignette.  I grew up in a very small upstate New York town where everyone knew everyone else.  You used your car horn to beep “hi” or to warn, and not in anger, ever.  When you waved at someone, it was with all five fingers.  And so on.  I think you get my point.

The healthcare debate always has stoked emotions like almost no other.  It is intensely personal, and the stakes are high.  We’re all involved and engaged.

As I’ve written in the past, I first earned my stripes as a lawyer representing my local Blue Cross plan in rate hearings.  These rate hearings always started with “public comment.”  The comment ranged from pure outrage to controlled anger to discontent coupled with suggestions.  What did we pay the most attention to?  Of course, the latter.

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Trump’s Healthcare Plan: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Prescription

Screen Shot 2016-04-08 at 9.37.58 AMDonald Trump recently released a healthcare reform plan. If only he had spent as much time crafting it as he does his hair. 

The GOP frontrunner is right that Obamacare has failed to fix what ails America’s healthcare system. As Trump put it, the Affordable Care Act has “tragically but predictably resulted in runaway costs, websites that don’t work, greater rationing of care, higher premiums, less competition and fewer choices.”  He famously said that he wants to “repeal and replace with something terrific.”

But “terrific” his plan is not.

Take, for instance, his proposal to legalize the importation of “safe and dependable [prescription] drugs from overseas.”

Importing cheaper drugs from other countries may seem like a great way to reduce the cost of medicine for Americans. But there are important reasons why it’s currently prohibited.

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Repealed or Repaired?

Screen Shot 2016-03-31 at 10.09.59 AM

Last Wednesday marked the sixth anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As of this week, the five Presidential aspirants have each articulated key changes they’d propose, though polls show interest in the law is largely among Democrats who consider healthcare a major issue along with national security and the economy.

GOP candidates Trump, Cruz and Kasich say they will repeal the law; Democratic frontrunner Clinton says she will repair it, and her challenger, Bernie Sanders, promises to replace it with universal coverage. Some speculate that candidate Clinton’s plan will ultimately mirror her Health Security Act of 1993 that parallels the Affordable Care Act in many respects. But the law gets scant attention on the campaign trails other than their intent about its destiny if elected.

I have read the ACA at least 30 times, each time musing over its complexity, intended results, unintended consequences and hanging chads. At the risk of over-simplification, the law purposed to achieve two aims: to increase access to insurance for those unable to qualify or afford coverage, and to bend the cost curve downward from its 30 year climb. It passed both houses of Congress in the midst of our nation’s second deepest downturn since the Great Depression. Unemployment was above 10%, the GDP was flat, and companies were cutting costs and offshoring to adapt.

The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” soon after became known as the “Affordable Care Act”, and then, in the 2010 Congressional Campaign season that followed its passage, “Obamacare”. It was then and now a divisive law: Kaiser tracking polls show the nation has been evenly divided for and against: those opposed see it as “the government takeover of healthcare” that will dismantle an arguably expensive system that works for most, while those supportive see it as a necessary to securing insurance coverage for those lacking.

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