Tag Archives: ACA

What Will SCOTUS* Do?

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Posted by Joel Wittman

After three days of hearing oral arguments on the legality of all, or parts, of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Supreme Court is hopeful of rendering its decision in June.  Based on what we’ve heard so far, it doesn’t bode well for the ACA.  The primary issue of contention is the inclusion of an “insurance mandate” whereby citizens are required to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty.  The mandate seems to be the linchpin of the reform act; without this requirement will insurance premiums skyrocket and will access to health insurance be limited?  This also raises the question of severability.  If the mandate is struck down, will the entire ACA also be invalidated or can parts of it survive?  Will the law’s popular “guarantee issue” and “community rating” provisions survive without the mandate that virtually all Americans must have health insurance?  Guarantee issue prevents insurers from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions and community rating standardizes insurance premiums for those living in the same area.  The states that have attempted to enact guarantee issue and community rating systems without instituting mandates saw their health reforms fail – insurance premiums skyrocketed, consumers had fewer choices and the number of uninsured went up.

So, what is the insurance industry to do?  Insurers must prepare for a worst-case scenario – a ruling that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, but insurers still must provide policies for all people.  In that situation, insurers say premiums will rise sharply because of people with chronic illnesses and pre-existing conditions, for example, would buy health coverage, but healthy people would not.  Short of persuading Congress to write a new law, the insurers are considering certain contingencies including:

- Penalizing those who enroll outside of short annual windows

- Denying treatment for specific conditions, especially right after a policy is purchased

- Rewarding certain insurance buyers, such as offering much lower premiums for younger and healthier people

- Expanding employers’ role in automatically enrolling employees for health insurance

- Urging credit- rating firms to use health insurance status as a factor in determining individuals’ credit ratings.

There remains, however, a divided opinion about the exclusion or inclusion of the individual mandate in the health reform act.  Some believe that its exclusion will cripple the ACA and all of its proposed benefits, while others contend that the penalty associated with the mandate is not onerous enough to deter individuals from not purchasing health insurance.

Things are never as simple as they seem to be.  The good intention of the current administration to increase access to health insurance coverage for all individuals at affordable pricing may not be good enough to preserve the goals of the ACA.  Do you throw out the baby with the bath water if the entire plan is deemed unconstitutional?  Do you preserve part of plan and try to make the best of the remaining regulations?  Or, do you leave the ACA as is and have the first meaningful health care reform since the Great Society?  Only SCOTUS can let us know.

* Supreme Court of the United States

Joel Wittman is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Wagner School of Public service of New York University.  He is the proprietor of both Health Care Mergers and Acquisitions and The Wittman Group, two organizations that provide management advisory services to companies in the post-acute health care industry. He can be reached at joel.wittman@verizon.net.


Building an Exchange Strategy Part II – Understanding Your Political Climate

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Posted By  Errol Pierre

By 2014 there will potentially be a health benefit exchange in every state across the country. Like snowflakes no exchange will be alike and politics will play a pivotal role in the differences found between them. While the healthcare reform bill signed into law requires the establishment of exchanges, the details of operation have yet to be determined. In fact, in March 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided 600 pages of additional guidance to the states. The guidance given was more of a framework while much of the particulars were purposefully left out. This has made the role of the individual State Governors ever important. They are now in a position of power and play a very integral role in bringing exchanges from a theoretical policy concept to a legislative and operational reality.

Right or Left
At a high level, left leaning blue states will design their exchange to be an active purchaser. This will allow the Governor to take an active role in the day to day exchange operations. Under the direction of an exchange board, most likely selected by the Governor, these states would choose precisely which insurance companies participate, the types of policies sold, the rates of the selected products, and how enrollment and eligibility of those enrolled would work. In some more aggressive instances, states could even negotiate pricings with doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies in the very same ways insurance companies do today in the private sector. This is obviously foreign territory to many of the states pursuing such a model. Nonetheless, proponents of the model see value in such an approach believing more oversight will lead to more affordability and better health outcomes in the long run.

Right leaning red states on the other hand will opt for a facilitator model. The state will merely be a marketplace for health benefit transactions between consumers and insurance companies to occur. They will set the high level guidelines and guardrails and merely outline the rules of engagement. Much of the market dynamics will be left up to private insurance and market forces to sort out. Benefit design, rate approval, distribution strategy, the “off-exchange” marketplace, and pricing will all be left up to “the invisible hand” of Adam Smith’s market forces. The idea of competition lowering healthcare costs has been refuted by the likes of many including Alain Enthoven – the father of managed competition – and Kenneth Arrow – the pioneer in research on asymmetric information as a market failure in healthcare. Nonetheless, American capitalism seems to have trumped over such doubts in these states. As a result, the role of government in these exchanges will be as minimal as the healthcare reform legislation will allow. There are already mandates that must be in place for each exchange. For example there must be four benefit categories ranked by actuarial values labeled bronze, silver, gold, and platinum for simplicity. The legislation also caps insurance company profit at 20% before operating costs are factored in. Lastly, the legislation requires health insurance companies to accept all enrollees and requires that the ratio between the pricing of the healthiest and the sickest consumer not exceed a 3 to 1 ratio. All in all, governors of these red states feel too much regulation stifles competition and the reform bill already has enough rules. As such, they are reluctant to add any further requirements on top of the federal ones. In this role the state will play referee rather than player/coach.

Politics at Play
State by state, there will be different shades of blue as states consider the ramifications of building a health benefit exchange. Health insurers must be prepared to understand how these different shades will impact the development of health policy. Vermont, for example, will be one of those very bold blue states. On May 26, 2011, Governor Peter Shumlin signed into law a historic universal healthcare bill which would cover every citizen in the state under a single payer system called Green Mountain Care. It will be in place by 2017 and the state has been drawing down federal funds from the national health reform bill as it prepares.

Like blue states, there too will be shades of red. Arkansas is a perfect example of a bright red state. Legislative opposition to a state run exchange was so great, Jay Bradford, the State Insurance Commissioner, had to  start preparing for a federally run exchange. By law, when a state cannot come up with its own legislation to run an exchange, the federal government is required to step in and set one up. Ironically, legislators that are so vehemently against Obama’s healthcare reform legislation will end up with a federally run exchange led behind Kathleen Sebelius, the current Secretary of Health and Human Services and former democratic Governor of Kansas.

Understanding the political environment of your state of operation is paramount to assessing the viability of a successful exchange strategy for a private insurance company. An active purchaser model lends itself to be a market where the constraints may be too great to be successful and sustainable. If the market is too controlled, healthcare coverage quickly becomes a commodity and erodes the levers of differentiation used to be competitive. Health insurance companies could come to the conclusion that participating in such a state will not be viable and opt to stay on the sidelines. However, the state would technically have the right to mandate (either directly or indirectly) insurance company participation, which could turn the state into a defacto-single payer.

On the other hand, a facilitator model lends itself to be the more favorable for an insurance company to operate within. However, a state that has done everything to obstruct healthcare reform progress like Arkansas is just as dangerous. It most likely will end up with a federally run exchange which could potentially be more burdensome than a facilitated one a red state would have had the option to create.

Errol Pierre works at a large insurance company focused on business development, sales, and strategy for employee benefits. He is currently pursuing a degree in Health Policy and Management with a specializing in health finance. He can be reached at errol.pierre@nyu.edu

 


SOTU: What Obama Didn’t Say

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Posted By Errol Pierre

President Obama filled up close to 90 minutes of TV airtime giving his 3rd State of the Union Address last week. With 6,953 words (about 12 pages) to choose from political pundits filled the airwaves all across the country with animated reactions commenting on everything from the details of his plans to his tone, his demeanor, and overall performance. But all too often we forget that with great orators, it is more important to focus on the words that were not said than the ones that were….

Here are the facts:

- “Health” was used only 7 times during his speech (roughly 0.001% which takes up less than 1 line on a page).

- His comments regarding Healthcare made up only 332 words. That represented 4.7% of his speech (about a page and half). A little better but still severely lacking in substance.

How can that be?

- Health expenditures in this country represent more than 16% of our GDP while the average percentage among high income nations is roughly 10%.

- 13.1 million Americans lack a job but more than 50 million Americans in this country lack health insurance. Doesn’t healthcare deserve more attention?

- Since inauguration, he has spent 60% of his time in office getting what he called his #1 domestic policy agenda, healthcare reform, passed through Congress. If you recall, he entered office on January 20, 2010 and healthcare reform was passed on March 23, 2011. So 15 out of his now 25 months were dedicated to the pursuit of universal healthcare.

- Lastly, most of the popular provisions of the law have already been instituted. Millions of young adults in their twenties have been able to get insurance through their parents. And even more promising, no child under 18 can be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.

So why were there so few words on healthcare? Discussing income inequality yet avoiding healthcare is not having an honest discussion about the problem. America spends more money on healthcare than any country on the planet. What is not widely known are the percentages spent by the government versus the private sector and how that impacts the American pocketbook. This country is actually on par with other high income nations spending 7.4% of their GDP on government health expenditures like Medicare, Medicaid, and Veteran healthcare. For a comparison, countries like France (8.7%) and Germany (8.1%) are at higher levels with government run universal healthcare. However, when it comes to expenditures from the private sector, America spends an additional 8.5% of its GDP representing almost half (52.2%) of total health costs for the entire country. That is 4 times higher than most like nations. In fact those private sector figures put us in 50th place between Rwanda (49th) and Gambia (51st) according to the World Health Organization.

WHY IT MATTERS

Most Americans get health insurance through their employer leaving American businesses on the hook for large portions of the country’s private health expenditures. It’s been the catalyst for corporations moving jobs overseas. It’s why the United States Postal Service is teetering on the edge of insolvency. It’s why America bailed out General Motors and restructured their Union contracts to be the #1 car company in the world again.

Most Americans work for businesses with 200 or more employees. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 99% of the time these businesses are offering health insurance to those employees. The foundation goes on to highlight that the cost of these employer health plans have gone up by 113% over the past 10 years with employers paying close to 73% of those costs on behalf of their employee population. As a result they have shielded much of the exorbitant healthcare increases from their employees. This has had grave repercussions to the average American salary. You cannot talk about income inequality and ignore non-salaried benefits like health insurance. These increases have poked huge holes in the bucket of funds that corporations use to payout employee compensation. You also cannot blame health insurance companies for these increases either. Their profit margins barely surpass 4% compared to pharmaceutical companies that enjoy 15% margins. The blame really goes to the actual cost of providing healthcare.

The U.S Social Security Administration has tracked the national average wages in this country since 1951. In 2001 it was $32,921. In 2010 it is $41,673. So despite the increases in health insurance costs, wages have still gone up 27% in the past 10 years. American employees however have seen 131% growth in the amount of money they must contribute to their health plan. It has gone from $1,787 in 2001 to $4,129 in 2010. So Americans have literally went from paying 5% of their salary on health insurance to 10% in 10 years not even accounting for the increase in co-payments, deductibles, and out of pocket costs.

If you truly want to tackle income inequality, look no further than tackling the increases in healthcare spending. Healthcare reform did not go far enough on this issue. It increased access via health exchanges, protected more patients via insurance regulations like profit ceilings and mandated benefits. But it did nothing to tackle costs. Even worse, our healthcare system will continue to shield costs from the consumer by giving subsidies to lower income Americans so that insurance can be more affordable. But these subsidies are paid for by taxes and fees levied on health insurance companies ($60 billion), on Americans with rich “Cadillac” type health plans ($32 billion), on pharmaceutical companies ($27 billion), and on high income earners use of hospitals ($210 billion). The only problem with these types of revenue streams are the laws of economics. Since individual Americans and large businesses will be required by law to purchase insurance by 2014, they as consumers will be more inelastic than their suppliers. In the end most of these taxes and fees will be passed on to the most vulnerable consumers further eating away at their hard earned income.

President Obama concluded his healthcare remarks conceding that he was “willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs, including one that Republicans suggested last year — medical malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits.” The only problem is here is the sad reality. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation only 11,000 malpractice claims were paid in 2009 amounting to $3.6 billion. That sounds like a big number but it is only 0.2% of total U.S. health costs. So the only question left is how much medical malpractice reform could help to actually close the income inequality gap. Well, the average malpractice suit is only $11.99 per capita, putting $12 bucks back in everyone’s pocket. I guess the good news is this kind of policy change would help fight the common cold giving every American the extra disposable income to buy a bottle of Robitussin from CVS.

Errol Pierre works at a large insurance company focused on business development, sales, and strategy for employee benefits. He is currently pursuing a degree in Health Policy and Management with a specializing in health finance. He can be reached at errol.pierre@nyu.edu

 


Building an Exchange Strategy Part I – Changing Your Vantage Point

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Posted By Errol Pierre

Health benefit exchanges are set to be fully operational by 2014. As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), these exchanges seek to be a marketplace for consumers to purchase affordable coverage. Subsidies to reduce both the cost of insurance and the out of pocket expenses from copayments and deductibles will be available to eligible consumers as well. Estimates suggest close to 30 million Americans will find coverage through this avenue lowering the uninsured rate to 3%.

These exchanges will revolutionize the way health insurance companies operate. Most Americans receive insurance through their employer. As such, insurance companies have built their world around marketing to them rather than directly to individual consumers. Over the years, insurance company processes, products, and strategies have all conformed to employer choice and preferences. Even the way customer service is organized and how information is shared caters to an employer-centric business model.  However, by 2014 health insurance companies will need to operate differently to capitalize on the million of new health consumers entering the market.

Consumers purchase products much differently than employers. Consumer motivation is largely based on personal preferences and emotions while companies make rational decisions based on economic value.  So business to consumer (B2C) marketing has been much more demanding and onerous than business to business (B2B) marketing. Health insurance companies as a result have gotten away with minimal efforts in advertising using business publications and newspaper ads that reach CEOs, CFOs, benefit consultants, and decision makers. Marketing campaigns targeting decisions makers has been an easier road to handle than attempting to market the average consumer.  In fact most of the insurance policies sold in the United States are through brokers or independent agents hired by a business that receives compensation from the company whose product gets sold. Consequently, the construct of this industry has kept marketing innovation and ingenuity at bay. For years the basic message segmentation for B2B advertisements has been limited to industry and firm size.

Not all insurance companies suffer from this lack of consumer centric segmentation however. The car insurance industry is a perfect example of what the health insurance industry will aspire to be by 2014. Geckos and cave men, made up stores with humorous sales representatives, over the top actors representing natural disasters and unfortunate accidents, and catchy jingles all represent the car insurance industry’s push for market share catering to consumer preferences. Geico, Progressive, Allstate, and State Farm have all used innovative TV, internet, and other media ads recently to differentiate themselves. One main reason is because car insurance is largely purchased at the consumer level. As such, the industry caters solely to the wants, needs, and desires of the personal shopper. They have developed enhanced customer service levels, easy to use online tools, and a wide array of products and services all with a focus on consumer appeal. The consumer is essentially the center of the strategy. After all, it is the consumer who has the power to terminate the policy at any time; not the consumer’s employer.

Health insurance companies have a tough road ahead if they wish to compete at the same level. Moving from an employer-centric model to a consumer-centric model is more than just a mission and a vision. It really is a shift in corporate culture. It starts from the top down as much as it does from the bottom up. The CEO must believe in the change as well as the customer service representative answering the phone. There must be a commitment to innovation, ease of use, positive public perception, and consumer preference. The products offered must allow for customization and flexibility. The policies for grievances, appeals, and complaints must be customer friendly and aimed at pleasing the client. Such attributes have unfortunately been foreign to the health insurance industry and they have less than 2 years to quickly figure it all out.

Errol Pierre works at a large insurance company focused on business development, sales, and strategy for employee benefits. He is currently pursuing a degree in Health Policy and Management with a specializing in health finance. He can be reached at errol.pierre@nyu.edu


Strategies for the Health Care Reform Era

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Posted by Joel Wittman

The Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act (PPACA) has unleashed a flurry of activity by health care providers and executives in response to some of its provisions.  While the PPACA primarily addresses the issue of access to health care services by patients, it also touches on the areas of cost-cutting, reimbursement and improvement in quality of care.  This article will refer to some strategies for hospitals to consider in adapting to the changing health care climate. Future articles  will indicate five cost-cutting health care trends to watch and will provide a list of recommendations for savings  developed by health care executives that were submitted to the now-failed “Super-Duper Congressional Deficit Reduction Committee”.

Hospitals and health systems are developing and implementing strategies to adapt to the dynamic health care environment.  The American Hospital Association Committee on Performance Improvement recently issued a report on priority strategies for hospitals and health systems of the future, which included responses from health care executives, which should be undertaken in the coming decade.  The top four are:

  1. Aligning hospitals, physicians, and other providers across the care continuum:    Described as a shifting paradigm from “competition to interdependency”, according to the report, aligning providers across the care continuum is essential to true partnerships and care coordination.  This can include shared savings incentives and sharing of data.  Wenatchee (Wash.) Valley Medical Center held meetings with all providers and acted on their suggestions.
  2. Utilizing evidence-based practices to improve quality and patient safety: Quality is directly tied to reimbursement, especially as hospitals with high readmission rates will be penalized starting in 2013.  Hospitals need to improve outcomes and should employ multi-disciplinary teams to review cases that failed with the goal of modifying processes accordingly.  Flowers Hospital in Alabama was able to achieve a more than 99% compliance rate with CMS core measures, tied to its financial reimbursements.
  3. Improving efficiency through productivity and financial management: Hospital executives are looking for ways to cut redundant efforts and standardize processed to cut costs and improve patient care.  North Mississippi Medical Center sought to improve patient satisfaction in the ED around wait times by implementing bedside triage, allowing for X-ray viewing abilities in each patient room, and installing a computerized tracking system to increase patient flow
  4. Developing integrated information systems: While health IT is critical to connecting providers with information in real time, in addition to owning the technology, hospitals and health systems must perform sophisticated data mining and analysis for continuous improvement in patient care and for the organization.  Piedmont Clinic in Atlanta, using several sources of electronic data, created a single data warehouse with information on patient satisfaction, core measures, physician quality reporting, population health statistics, and billing.  In addition, Piedmont provided daily updates about the critical data.

Change is inevitable and will occur.  What will vary is each organization’s journey to develop responses to these changes.

In next month’s column, I will suggest five cost-cutting health care trends to watch and, perhaps, what cost-cutting measures health care leaders suggested to the now-defunct Congressional Deficit Reduction Committee.

Joel Wittman is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Wagner School of Public service of New York University.  He is the proprietor of both Health Care Mergers and Acquisitions and The Wittman Group, two organizations that provide management advisory services to companies in the post-acute health care industry. He can be reached at joel.wittman@verizon.net.

 


Alleviating Our Value Deficit

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Posted by Elaine Purcell

Fortunately, cutting healthcare costs is hardly a partisan issue. Especially during this time of economic downturn, policymakers and taxpayers alike are looking to cut costs anywhere they can. Regardless, where and by how much these expenses should be cut remains a major point of contention among policymakers across the political spectrum. Given the increasingly high costs associated with the healthcare system, it is not surprising that government healthcare programs have become low-hanging fruit for budget cuts—less than two years after the enactment of costly healthcare reform legislation.

Following the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services reported that the bill would increase total national health expenditures by more than $200 billion from 2010-2019. In a statement by the Congressional Budge Office (CBO) in May 2010, they stated: Rising health costs will put tremendous pressure on the federal budget during the next few decades and beyond. In CBO’s judgment, the health legislation enacted earlier this year does not substantially diminish that pressure.

ACA’s prospects of cutting costs may appear grim. In 2010 alone the United States spent$2.6 trillion on healthcare – over $8,000 per American. For more than 30 years now, healthcare costs have been growing at a rate 2% greater than the general economy. As an additional portion of the U.S. population gains insurance through expanded government healthcare programs, can we actually afford this new legislation?

A simple answer to this question is derived from basic financial principles: in order to achieve a return on an investment, one must actually make an investment. Nevertheless, the stakes are high and the nuances lie in how to not only achieve a return, but the greatest return from our $200 billion/year investment in the healthcare system.

To achieve the greatest return, we cannot only focus on reducing costs – we must strive to also improve quality. Ranked by the World Health Organization as the highest in costs but 37th in overall performance, the U.S. healthcare system is evidently experiencing a ‘value-deficit,’ which is truly at the crux of our nation’s healthcare problems.

One of the strongest themes pervasive throughout ACA is the generation of more information. More information on the top hospitals and the best doctors. More information on the medications that are most effective for treating certain conditions and patient populations. More information on how health plans’ benefit packages compare to others. According to basic market principles, additional and more accessible information will drive competition, which in turn, will force the suppliers of healthcare services to lower their costs and improve quality.

Regardless, in order to achieve greater competition, healthcare consumers must also change their behavior. They need to better understand their purchasing decisions. It’s ironic that with a commodity as priceless as good health, so many patients passively accept or deny treatments and services provided based on limited information. Patients must have the gumption to research their condition and choose providers or medication based on unbiased and comprehensible information.

Nevertheless, due to the nature of healthcare insurance, few patients are cognizant of healthcare costs. To alleviate this moral hazard, the financial burden must be extended to either the patient or the provider. ACA focuses primarily on the provider through carrot and stick approaches, such as pay-for-performance (P4P) programs, which reward physicians for providing the best care. Further, P4P penalizes physicians for over- providing care, thus making them more accountable for costs associated with the care they deliver.

To alleviate moral hazard on the patient side is more complicated and risky. Healthcare consumers are often more price elastic than one would predict, given that they currently lack the information and training to predict the consequences of foregoing certain preventive measures and early interventions. Nevertheless, applying co-payments on certain procedures and not others (such as mammograms) may encourage patients to be more wary of the amount and type of healthcare they consume.

Ultimately, the simplest equation for alleviating the value-deficit is this: costs divided by quality. Although this is undoubtedly more difficult to achieve than simple division, this basic equation should be the basis for solving the problems of our healthcare system.

Elaine Purcell is a second year graduate student in Wagner’s Health Policy and Management Program focusing on Healthcare Management and Administration. Prior to Wagner, she worked in Washington, DC analyzing healthcare policy during the passage of national healthcare reform.