The party of Cost Sharing Inflation

When House Republicans sued the Obama administration in 2014 to stop federal payments to health insurers for Cost Sharing Reduction subsidies in the ACA marketplace, the simple goal was sabotage: use any tool that came to hand to hobble the markets.  (That goes as well for refusing to appropriate the budgeted funds for CSR.)

At the same time, I suggest today in a healthinsurance.org piece that will be out this morning, this particular bit of legal vandalism made ideological sense, in that Republicans do not believe in cost sharing reduction. They believe in cost sharing inflation: if each of us pays a higher percentage of our medical costs, we'll demand better prices for care, and prices will go down.

This ideology is fully expressed in the BCRA, which asks low income people to swap out Medicaid coverage, or CSR-enhanced marketplace coverage at AV 94% or 87%, for coverage at AV 58%. That's a feature, not a bug. Hope you'll take a look. 

Trading Medicaid coverage for high deductible private market coverage

The Senate version of the AHCA, the Orwellianly named Better Care Reconciliation Act, does even more fundamental damage to the U.S. healthcare system than the House bill. While it phases out the ACA Medicaid expansion more slowly, stepping down the enhanced federal contribution over several years, it imposes even tighter per capita caps on Medicaid, limiting annual growth to the straight CPI after 2024. The damage to Medicaid will be continuous in perpetuity, barring further legislation.

The BCRA does toss a bone to the dis-insured poor by offering private-market subsidies to those who are shut out of Medicaid. Under the ACA, in the 31 states plus D.C. that accepted the law's Medicaid expansion (rendered optional to states by the Supreme Court), anyone whose household income is below  139% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) qualifies for Medicaid, and so not for subsidies in the private plan marketplace (with one class of exceptions*).  In states that refused the expansion -- a possibility not envisioned by the law's drafters -- eligibility for Marketplace subsidies begins at 100% FPL, and those below that level are left out in the cold -- because their state's governors and legislatures wanted it that way.

The BCRA allows people with incomes in 0-100% FPL range to buy a "benchmark" plan for 2% of income, and those in 100-133% FPL range** to buy one for no more than 2.5% of income:

Quick thoughts before the bill hits the tape

The Senate iteration of the AHCA is due out in about 40 minutes. A couple of quick thoughts, brought into focus by David Anderson's "how to read the bill" cheat sheet:

1) Back-loaded per capita caps imposed on Medicaid can theoretically be repealed before they kick in. But if the bill's massive tax cuts are not similarly back-loaded (to improve the CBO score), new tax increases would have to be passed in concert with repeal.

2. The more Republicans fiddle around with and publicly fight over individual market subsidies and rules, the easier they'll likely find it to pass the massive cuts to Medicaid that are the bill's core feature.

3.I can't shake the feeling that McConnell has some trick up his sleeve to make the CBO score a positive shock that helps sweep the moderates into the yes column. A "positive shock" might be a forecast of,, say, a reduction of a mere 8 million in the number of people with insurance by 2026, which Republicans can explain away as a result of personal choices (no mandate coercion) or CBO error.

4. What could that shock be? A cap on the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored insurance? Hard to believe. A little coup within CBO? Don't know how that work. Something else? Nothing?

So much for idle speculation....

AHCA would increase New Jersey's uninsured population by 540,000: NJPP Report

540,000 fewer people in New Jersey will have health insurance by 2026 under the American Health Care Act (AHCA) than under current law, according to an updated analysis by Raymond Castro of New Jersey Policy Perspective. The update takes into account the May 24 cost estimate by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) of the amended AHCA that passed the House on May 4.

Should the AHCA become law, NJPP forecasts:

• The state uninsurance rate would increase by 50%, from 9.8% to 14.7% in 2026.
• The uninsurance rate would double in Rodney Frelinghuysen's Congressional district, and more than double in Tom MacArthur's.
• Almost all of the 562,000 New Jerseyans covered by the ACA Medicaid expansion would lose Medicaid coverage, and about two thirds of them would remain uninsured.
• About one in ten New Jersey adults would lose Medicaid coverage.
• The state would lose $28 billion in federal funding over ten years -- $21 billion in Medicaid funding, and $7 billion in reduced Marketplace subsidies.
• The wealthiest 5 percent of NJ households would receive $13 billion in tax cuts over 10 years.
• About 100,000 New Jerseyans would lose coverage in the individual market through reduction in subsidies for premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

Amend the Senatized AHCA

To help Democrats introduce thousands of amendments before the (Senatized) AHCA comes to a vote, Indivisible is inviting all of us to add our own stories to their amendment*; they'll ask  our senators to make their constituents' testimonials part of the Congressional Record. Contribute here!

With Democratic senators being tasked with offering thousands of amendments, I thought I'd propose a few. Some are mutually exclusive, some would cost money, some would only work under current law, some may be unworkable. Brainstormer's licence...

1. Nothing in this bill shall be construed to render anyone who was eligible for Medicaid under prior law ineligible.


2. Congress shall not cap the federal contribution to Medicaid by any formula that reduces the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) in effect prior to enactment of this legislation.


3. Any insurer that participates in a state's nongroup health insurance market must offer plans on the state Marketplace, in every area where it sells off-Marketplace.

An American road to single payer

Ezra Klein offers an astute political forecast:

...if Republicans leave Obamacare gutted and the political arguments that led to it in ruins, there’s not going to be a constituency for rebuilding it when Democrats win back power.

Instead, they’ll pass what many of them wanted to pass in the first place: a heavily subsidized buy-in program for Medicare or Medicaid, funded by a tax increase on the rich. A policy like that would fit smoothly through the 51-vote reconciliation process, and it will satisfy an angry party seeking the fastest, most defensible path to restoring the Affordable Care Act’s coverage gains.

A few thoughts:

1. If a Medicaid income-adjusted buy-in were offered only to nonelderly who lack access to employer-sponsored insurance or other government programs, it shouldn't require more funding than the ACA marketplace. OTOH, if the AHCA has passed, Democrats will need to replace the revenue provided by the ACA taxes Republicans will have repealed (close to $900 billion over ten years, rather than the $600+ billion Klein cites, if you include revenue from the repealed ACA mandates).

2. If a buy-in were subsequently offered to employers -- perhaps starting with small employers -- that buy-in would amount to a voluntary payroll tax.

The Medicaid Dismemberment Act

Over at healthinsurance.org, I've made a case that the AHCA is not simply -- or even primarily -- an ACA repeal bill. It's a Medicaid dismemberment bill.  That goes for the Senate variant in progress as well.  Furthermore:

The degree of damage to be wrought by the legislation's various spending reductions is almost the inverse of where media emphasis falls;

and finally

the damage Republicans will likely do to the individual market is dwarfed by the damage they will certainly do (if they pass anything) to Medicaid. Thus all the high drama over medical underwriting and EHBs continues to serve as a smokescreen for Medicaid's dismemberment.

I rank the bill's three primary means of doing violence to existing parts of our healthcare system. Hope you'll take a look. 

Senate "moderates" promised long ago to support the ACA repeal bill in progress

I keep reading that Senators Capito and Portman and Heller, relative Republican "moderates" from states that have embraced the ACA Medicaid expansion,  have reversed themselves by signaling willingness to repeal the expansion if the repeal timeline is stretched out.

Capito may have made some contradictory noises over the last few months, occasionally indicating that she does not want to see the expansion repealed.

But look again at the letter to McConnell that Capito and Portman signed onto just before the House repeal bill, the AHCA, was released.  That letter, which was read as defense of the Medicaid expansion, demanded

that any health care replacement provide states with a stable transition period and the opportunity to gradually phase-in their populations to any new Medicaid financing structure.

In Republican-speak, that means expanding the timeline in which enhanced federal funding for the Medicaid expansion population is phased out -- as the Senate bill will do. I examined the letter's consistency with the course the Senate is undertaking now in more detail in this post.

Senate Republicans may outspend the ACA on individual market subsidies -- at Medicaid's expense

While Republican senators working on ACA repeal will doubtless screw up the individual market for health insurance, they are not planning to spend less money on it. All of their spending cuts -- needed to pay for tax cuts -- will come out of Medicaid's hide. Since the Medicaid expansion they're planning to repeal is a roaring success, they're following the House in diverting everyone's attention with emotionally fraught questions about individual market structure.

According to Vox's Dylan Scott, Senate Republicans are near agreement on the basic outline of their Medicaid cuts -- they will roll back the expansion over more or less years and impose per capita caps on all Medicaid spending, as Ryan's AHCA does. As for the individual market:

There’s broad agreement to increase the money the House bill would spend subsidizing Americans who buy insurance on the individual market. That increase would probably improve, at least somewhat, the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that the House bill would cause 23 million fewer Americans to have health insurance a decade from now.

In fact, any improvement to the AHCA individual market design and funding will improve CBO's uninsured estimate for the AHCA only marginally. In CBO's forecast, the individual market will insure only two million fewer people under the AHCA than under current law ten years from now (though enrollees will be wealthier, younger and more skimpily covered, and most of the roughly 7 million ACA enrollees with incomes under 200% FPL will likely be priced out).

Senate exterminators gear up to expel Medicaid expansion beneficiaries

Earlier this spring, we had a squirrel in our eaves. An exterminator installed a one-way door, leaving the squirrel free to rattle about until circumstances drove her outside. Which of course they did, after a few days -- maybe three, maybe seven.

Way back in mid-January, when the AHCA was just an exhalation from Paul Ryan's college memories, this promise from Texas Senator John Cornyn seemed startling and impressive:

When Cornyn was asked if he was concerned about people who’ve benefited from Medicaid expansion losing coverage, he said it was a shared concern.

“Were all concerned, but it ain’t going to happen,” Cornyn said. “Will you write that down… It ain’t gonna happen.”

As Republican moderates cave on Medicaid cuts, what can Dems do?

As I feared back in March, the "moderate" Republicans in the Senate who profess concern about plans to repeal the ACA Medicaid expansion and impose per capita caps on federal funding for Medicaid are going squish. They'll settle for slowing repeal of the expansion rather than stopping it, and perhaps for some partial easing of the per capita caps, such as exempting coverage for the disabled.

Now as in March, Republican senators in states that have benefited from the expansion speak as if repeal of the expansion and a steady erosion in federal funding for all Medicaid programs is a natural disaster that they must help their constituents cope with, rather than their own free choice to inflict suffering on vulnerable people to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.

Here's Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, until now the strongest defender among Republican senators of maintaining ACA-level funding, speaking to Matt Fuller and Sam Stein of the Huffington Post. Over 300,000 Louisianians have gained Medicaid coverage since incoming governor John Bel Edwards implemented the expansion, beginning July 1, 2016.

AHCA Reduces Federal Spending on Private Health Insurance by....4%

[originally posted May 30]  The Republican bill rejiggers subsidies for the individual market but barely reduces them on net. Almost all the real cuts are in Medicaid     

Hours before House Republicans introduced the American Health Care Act, their ACA partial repeal/replace bill, on March 6, former CMS director Andy Slavitt tweeted:

When #ACA replacement bill is out, don't get distracted by exchanges.

The big issue is dramatic cuts in Medicaid to pay for huge tax cuts.

— Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) March 6, 2017

That remains true. In fact, it's truer than has been fully recognized.

The basic math of the AHCA, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), is a $992 billion* reduction in federal revenue over ten years, offset by a $1.1 trillion reduction in spending on health insurance benefits. Most of that spending cut is in Medicaid, reduced by $834 billion over ten years, according to the updated CBO analysis released on May 24.

The rest of the spending reduction ostensibly comes from cuts in subsidies to private insurance. But that reduction is largely illusory -- - because two of the major tax cuts included in the AHCA subsidize privately purchased health insurance and medical care.

The senescence of the United States

About five years ago my father-in-law, then in his mid-80s, of sound mind, gave my wife power of attorney and turned over management of his financial affairs, after 60 years of capably managing them himself.  "That's how it often works," his financial adviser told us. "They're very hands-on, and then suddenly they let go."

That came to mind as I read this Times editorial board review of Trump's "leadership":

In short order, Mr. Trump has pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, ceding leadership on trade in Asia to China; refused to reaffirm the mutual defense commitment that has been the bedrock of trans-Atlantic security for half a century, forcing America’s European allies to think about dealing with threats like Russia on their own; and abandoned a landmark agreement on climate change signed by 190-plus other nations, ceding leadership on the issue to Europe and China, and, in the bargain, forfeiting the rewards of participating in a worldwide clean energy economy that the agreement will bring.

I'm not thinking of Trump here, but of the United States. Maybe, collectively, we got tired, our faculties sapped by 40 years of galloping inequality and risk shift, as we fell behind much of the developed world in education, opportunity, health care and income growth and outpaced our peers (all afflicted to some degree) in letting the superrich capture a growing share of national wealth and, concomitantly, power. The portion of our population mired in job loss, income stagnation, family and community disintegration and right-wing gaslighting reached critical mass.

Alternative Facts, Alternative Realities Edition of Health Wonk Review

In a divided country and interconnected world, it often feels as if reality is fracturing before our eyes. When a spokesperson for the President asserts the administration's right to promulgate "alternative facts," it's a major challenge to convince a critical mass of people that verifiable facts are in fact verified. On the plus side, as ever more of the previously voiceless find or create a forum, we have the chance to see how differently a given law or trend may affect different people -- not alternative facts, but variant effects.  This week's Health Wonk blog reflects that variety, as well as battles over fact and interpretation.

First up is Harold Pollack in healthinsurance.org, tilting against alternative facts of the pure variety -- a.k.a. lies. In You can only lie about policy in Washington D.C., Pollack takes on four of Paul Ryan's assertions about the AHCA (delivered in short space) that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of the bill directly contradict.  Most of them boil down to claims that the AHCA will make insurance and healthcare more affordable to more people, but Ryan also avers for the umpteenth time that the ACA marketplace is collapsing under its own weight.

At InsureBlog, conversely, Patrick Paule takes on CBO the old fashioned way -- with a factual critique rather than a go-team cry of fake news. Paule asserts "four reasons the CBO score is flawed."noting that CBO  1) pits AHCA individual market enrollment against CBO's 2016 baseline for the ACA, which overestimated enrollment by 4 million; 2) assumes that under current law, more states would embrace the ACA Medicaid expansion; 3) assumes (thanks to the MacArthur Amendment, allowing states to waive ACA coverage rules) that some health plan enrollees won't have comprehensive coverage, but does not define what coverage must be provided to make the cut; and 4) does not delve into the implications of its forecast that millions will voluntarily drop insurance in the absence of a mandate to obtain it.

Does Avik Roy want to preserve or privatize the Medicaid expansion?

Conservative healthcare wonk Avik Roy, unlike Republicans in Congress, wants health insurance to be affordable for all Americans. But his proposal for an amended AHCA has an enormous hole in it: Medicaid.

Roy favors income-adjusted tax credits, which the AHCA maintains on an interim basis until 2020, with age-based adjustments to the ACA schedule. In 2020, a credit that adjusts only for age (and not sufficiently for that) takes over. Here's Roy's suggested amendment:

If the Senate were simply to remove the House bill’s uniform tax credit and continue the hybrid model past 2019 through 2020 and beyond, the bill would most likely get a better coverage score from the C.B.O. The Senate would be able to direct more financial assistance to those who need it, whether because of old age, ill health or low income. Indeed, the Senate could tweak the exact formulas for age and income adjustment, to maximize the number of people with health insurance in the most cost-effective way.

Under the 2018-19 subsidy schedule that Roy wants to make permanent, enrollees with incomes "up to" 133% of the Federal Poverty Level pay 2% of their income for a benchmark plan.The ACA specifies, however, that eligibility for credits begins at 100% FPL -- and the AHCA does not repeal that provision (and uses the same "up to 133" language in its subsidy schedule).. In states that accepted the ACA Medicaid expansion (after the Supreme Court made it optional for states in 2012), adults with incomes under 133% FPL (138% FPL in practice, because of a 5% deduction), are eligible for Medicaid. What happens to them under Roy's plan? Or to those with incomes under 100% FPL in non-expansion states, who currently are left out in the cold?

CBO flips off the Upton Amendment to the AHCA

The CBO report on the amended AHCA that passed the House expends considerable ink on the malign effects of the MacArthur amendments that won over the Freedom Caucus. Those amendments allowed states to opt out of ACA regulations banning medical underwriting and mandating that all qualified health plans cover ten Essential Health Benefits.   CBO forecast that states encompassing one sixth of the U.S. population would  fully embrace the opt-out -- and that in those states, guaranteed issue would effectively end, and services removed from EHBs such as maternity care would become prohibitively expensive. The individual market in these states would  thus become unstable, according to CBO.

When the MacArthur amendment became part of the AHCA, many Republican moderates anticipated such results and announced that they could not support the legislation because it did not adequately protect people with pre-existing conditions. A critical mass flipped back, however, when Fred Upton -- one of those who said he could not support the bill with the MacArthur amendment -- introduced an amendment allocating a mere $8 billion over 10 years for states to use to lower premiums for those harmed by the return of medical underwriting.  While that amendment was widely derided as a band-aid on a gunshot wound, Upton issued a statement declaring it sufficient:

“This week, I expressed my deep concerns with the AHCA as it was written to both President Trump and our leadership. We immediately got to work on a responsible fix.

AHIP puts Medicaid first in "do no harm" plea to Republicans

Early this week, in a letter to Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch, the America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the largest association of private health insurers, basically begged Republicans to stop threatening to uninsure tens of millions in the name of reform. 

AHIP voiced support for community rating, guaranteed issue, income- and age-based subsidies, and an enforcement measure sufficient to induce people to buy insurance. In other words, for preserving the ACA marketplace with a few regulatory teaks  -- and with the AHCA's $138 billion in federal funding for state reinsurance or other "stability" measures tossed in.

Striking on its face though the health insurance industry's renunciation of medical underwriting may be, the most remarkable part of the letter comes early, in its reframing of what healthcare "reform," Republican-style, is all about. AHCA opponents have been screaming for months that at the bill's core is a $900 billion tax cut* paid for by an $800+ billion Medicaid cut. It's been hard to break through the noise with that core equation, given the AHCA drafters' high-strung debates about various proposed malformations of the individual market. AHIP puts the pieces in perspective:

CBO: Some states will kill protections for those with pre-existing conditions -- and oh yes, the AHCA still eviscerates Medicaid

In late April, Matthew Fiedler explained in a Brookings brief that the MacArthur amendment to the AHCA, which allowed states to subject people who fail to maintain continuous coverage to medical underwriting, would not just affect those who fail to maintain continuous coverage. Fiedler's summary:

...the framework created by the waiver would allow states to effectively eliminate community rating protections for all people seeking individual market coverage, including people who had maintained continuous coverage.

In brief, healthy people would have a strong incentive to “opt out” of the community-rated pool and instead pay a premium based on health status. With healthy enrollees opting out of the community-rated pool, community-rated premiums would need to be extremely high, forcing sicker individuals—including those with continuous coverage—to choose between paying the extremely high community-rated premium or being underwritten themselves. Either way, people with serious health conditions would face prohibitively high premiums. As a result, community rating would be eviscerated—and with it any meaningful guarantee that seriously ill people can access coverage.

The CBO analysis of the amended AHCA released yesterday reproduces this argument:

Medical Billing: The Ten Do-well Commandments (after Elisabeth Rosenthal)

Elisabeth Rosenthal, reporter of the monumental Paying Till it Hurts series in the New York Times and author of  An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take it Back, has been out front with the "Ten Economic Rules of the Dysfunctional Medical Market" with which the book leads off -- e.g., on Twitter and on Medium.

To those of us who have saturated themselves in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton (which already feels like a relic of a bygone era), "10 rules"  inescapably conjure up The Ten Duel Commandments. So I have set them to imagined music below. At bottom, the rules as Rosenthal worded them.

A disclaimer: While the rules in isolation may seem excessively cynical, I don't think Rosenthal's point is that all providers follow them all the time, but that the incentives in our dysfunctional system pull them this way.  Another disclaimer: I haven't read the book yet. Too much current bad news to absorb. But I'll get there.

The Ten Billing Commandments

Number one: The treatment. More is always better.
Feed the bottom line, be a real go-getter.

Number two: Keep 'em coming. More is always more.
A lifetime of treatment trumps a simple cure.

Number three: Amenities and marketing are the way it's done.
Look like Cedars-Sinai and the battle is won.

Single Payer in CA? The impediments are mountainous

The widely reported topline of the analysis of California's single payer bill released by the state Senate Appropriations Committee is a highly uncertain forecast that the state would need to roughly double its revenue to pay for the benefit. That is, the total cost of care could run to $400 billion per year,  offset by up to  $200 billion in existing federal funding for Medicaid and Medicare -- if  HHS granted basically every waiver sought to transfer that funding from multiple programs. The spending would also replace an estimated $100-150 billion in employer-sponsored insurance. Funding it would require an estimated 15% payroll tax or equivalent revenue.

That level of spending, and cost-shifting from the private to the public sector, could be defensible, in the abstract. But the report, released under the name of committee chair Ricardo Lara and consultant Brendan McCarthy, asserts a host of practical impediments to implementation, including:

1. No cost control: The Healthy California Act imposes no premiums, no deductibles and no copays on enrollees (who include every resident in the state) and mandates no gatekeeping functions -- any enrollee can contract with any accredited provider and get 100% coverage for service.  Payment is essentially on a fee-for-service basis:

While the bill would allow for other forms of payment, the basic requirement in the bill that payments be cost-based and requirements in the bill that patients are able to see any willing provider of services would make it difficult for the Board to create capitated payment systems that would work under those constraints.

Consequently, and given the participation of every provider in the state, "the analysis assumes a 10% in health care service utilization over fee-for-service Medi-Cal...likely a conservative assumption."