Unkind unwinding: Health Policy Valentines 2024

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In a year of existential threats, and an era in which the corporate practice of medicine knows few curbs, there is still a stream of health policy wins worth serenading in the time-honored (since 2012!) tradition of #HealthPolicyValentines. This year’s mash notes below.

In a year of existential threats, and an era in which the corporate practice of medicine knows few curbs, there is still a stream of health policy wins worth serenading in the time-honored (since 2012!) tradition of #HealthPolicyValentines. This year’s mash notes are below.

The Medicaid unwinding
is often blind and cruel.
But spare some V-day love
For ex parte renewal.

* * *

A valentine from Democrats,
enacted, but hardly trending:
An annual Part D cap
on out-of-pocket spending.

* * *

What’s sweeter for seniors
than sugar and spices?
Medicare negotiating
selected drug prices.

* * *

Send flowers, chocolate and smiles
for keeping insurers squirmin’
over AI-driven denials
to Casey Ross and Bob Herman.

* * *

---

O ACA, flawed child,
I’ll no longer carp
so long as your subsidies
remain enhanced by the ARP.

* * *

For low-income tar heels,
nothing can be finer
than Medicaid expansion
in North Carolina.

* * *

Let’s honor legislation
little known, in point of fact,
preventing harm, unnoticed:
The No Surprises Act.

* * *

As oligarch-funded theocrats
harm the women of this nation,
my love goes to the National
Abortion Federation.

* * *

And one for my wife as I join her on the far side of the age-65 threshold:

After 40 years of love
we’ll take no crap
from MA insurers —
thanks to Medigap.

* * *

While dredging up healthcare doggerel like this, I always end up with some bitter snippets, then remind myself they’re not um, valentines. Since they now exist, however, and at the risk of spoiling the mood, I’ll share a little rage rhyming:

The Supreme Court’s out of control,
but had better not go postal
by voiding the FDA rule
for Mifepristone and Misoprostol.

* * *

Nothing’s more dangerous
for those with colon polyps,
financially speaking,
than private equity rollups.

Take a trip down ACA memory lane with a visit to the Health Policy Valentines archives: Surprise! No Surprises (2023), Flowers in the graveyard (2022), Institutional edition (2021), But love grows old and waxes cold (2020), The Water is Wide: Health Policy Valentines (2019),  HPV (2018), Love Knows No Repeal (2017),  Love in the Time of Obamacare (2016), love, 2015, and Romance of the Rose, Health Policy Edition (2014).

Photo by Aykut Aktemur 

Democrats have twelve years of healthcare accomplishment to run on

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Chuck Schumer tours Adirondack Medical Center

HuffPost reports that Priorities USA is urging Democrats to tout recent healthcare achievements:

In a memo set to be published Wednesday, Priorities USA says the most popular achievements of President Joe Biden’s tenure are giving Medicare the power to negotiate prescription drug prices, capping the price of insulin and continuing expanded subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.

Priorities USA recommends focusing on these issues while also attacking Republicans for working to restrict abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Amen. And below those top lines -- the healthcare provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act passed this month -- Democrats should also tout a long tail of recent accomplishments that have improved healthcare affordability and access. Their claim to be the party of healthcare bears not only recent but cumulative weight.

Healthcare was a potent issue for Democrats in 2018, with Republicans fresh off their failed attempt to repeal the ACA's core programs in 2017.  Because they failed, the ACA Medicaid expansion and subsidized marketplace survived to catch the newly uninsured when more than 20 million Americans lost their jobs in the first onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

All Dem (and doc) hands on deck to get Medicare drug negotiation/ACA subsidy boosts across the finish line

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It struck my eye last week  that Doctors for America, a physician advocacy group that supports single-payer healthcare, saw fit to call on member docs (via email) to lobby for what's left of the Democrats' reconciliation bill:

This is a decisive week in Congress with the Senate poised to vote on several crucial pieces of legislation, including allowing the HHS Secretary to negotiate for Medicare drug pricing, out-of-pocket caps in Part D, and rebates for price increases exceeding inflation. There are also new provisions to make vaccines free for Medicare beneficiaries, to stabilize premiums, and expand the Medicare low-income subsidy programs.

We hope the Senate will move forward with a meaningful reconciliation package that includes the drug price provisions before the August recess. But we need to apply pressure to do so.  Remind your senators to choose #PatientsOverPolitics and pass the reconciliation bill this week, including all of the health care provisions promised to the American people.