medpac Archives - Page 34 of 36 - The Healthcare Labyrinth

January 18, 2024

January 18, 2024 No Comments

Disappointing Medicare Advantage Enrollment Numbers Huge disappointment for some during the Medicare Advantage enrollment season. My quick math says that overall MA numbers increased a strong 8.7% from January 2023 to January 2024. That is up from a year ago, which was a little over 6%. But a number of plans did not fare well during the recent enrollment campaign. Aetna shined. While United and Humana grew, it was a much lower rates than before. Centene took a big hit. I will have my usual annual blog looking at all the data on Monday. Stay tuned. Additional article here: https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/humana-earnings-outlook-cut-high-medical-costs/704865/ (Some articles may require a subscription.) #medicareadvantage #healthplans #enrollment Link to Article Government Shutdown Averted Until Early March Over objections of the right flank in the House, Congress passed a new continuing resolution (CR) to keep government open until early March. New House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, previously said he

A Trump Second Term Would Be A Schizophrenic Experience On Healthcare

January 18, 2024 No Comments

Kaiser Health News recently did a piece on what a second Donald Trump term would mean for healthcare. It was a good piece and there is a link at the bottom of this story. That prompted me to do my own evaluation of the prospects of what might happen in Trump 2. After all, lawsuits and indictments do not appear to be impacting the president’s standing in the GOP primary polls, but we will see what New Hampshire brings with candidate Nikki Haley closing in on Trump. In the general election polls, Trump and President Biden are neck and neck. To be fair to the former president, his tenure on healthcare was a mixed bag. As a bit of an atypical Republican, he ventured into areas not usually seen. Here are some major areas I would call out as the good and then the bad and ugly. The Good Price

January 17, 2024

January 17, 2024 No Comments

CMS Finalizes Interoperability And Prior Authorization Rule The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized a sweeping interoperability rule today that also sets much stricter timelines for medical service prior authorizations. The rule was published some time ago and garnered a great deal of comments. The rule takes effect in January 2026 and requires 7 day standard and 72 hour expedited prior authorization turnaround times (federal Exchange plans excepted). Plans now have until 2027 to have APIs to allow providers to submit authorizations electronically. A national format exists for retail prescription drugs, but not a consistent one for medical service requests yet. The final specifications for medical services will tie to the Davinci Project, which will use the new FHIR standard. But plans will be able to use X12 formats as well. The rule applies to Medicare Advantage (MA), Medicaid, children’s coverage, and the federal Exchanges. The finalization of

January 16, 2024

January 16, 2024 No Comments

Congressional Leaders Agree on Extension of Funding The four congressional leaders announced a deal to extend government funding to March 8 to avoid a government shutdown. This is a concession by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, who originally said he would not extend government by a short-term continuing resolution (CR). A number of items are left out of the funding package. Conservatives in the House GOP caucus are not happy with Speaker Johnson’s (one of their own) endorsement of the extension. Additional articles here: https://insidehealthpolicy.com/daily-news/short-term-cr-carries-extenders-through-march-8 and https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4410728-congress-shutdown-conservative-anger/ Additional article on status of healthcare bills, including hospitals’ opposition to site-neutral payments that is in a passed bill that would forestall disproportionate share hospital(DSH) funding cuts: https://www.modernhealthcare.com/politics-policy/congress-spending-deal-hospitals-dsh-medicare-site-neutral (Some articles may require a subscription.) #governmentshutdown #crs Link to Article More Fallout From MedPAC Report On Medicare Advantage The fallout from the MedPAC meeting continues. A leading member has argued that the analysis by

January 15, 2024

January 15, 2024 No Comments

Good Articles On Takeaways From JPM Healthcare Conference Two good articles summarizing some major trends and topics at the JPM healthcare conference. Highlights include: Additional article here: https://www.modernhealthcare.com/finance/jpm-2024-takeaways-commonspirit-mayo-clinic-centene-cvs-cigna-teladoc (Some articles may require a subscription.) #healthplans #providers #hospitals #stars #pbms Link to Article AI Can Help Drive Social Determinant Information And Extraction Stories on the ability for generative AI to identify social determinants of health (SDOH) data in notes is a key development. The study indicates that extraction from clinical notes in tuned models show success in insights into housing, employment status, etc. Language models were able to identify about 94% of cases where SDOH barriers existed compared with 2% using diagnostic codes. We know that social determinants may be a greater predictor of health outcomes than underlying disease status. This will be key to driving outcomes in the future. Additional article here: https://www.modernhealthcare.com/digital-health/generative-ai-social-determinants-of-health-mass-general-brigham (Some articles may require a subscription.) #sdoh

The GOP Primary: My Dilemma From A Healthcare Perspective And Other Policy Issues

January 15, 2024 No Comments

Update: Posted early on January 1/15/2024 — Martin Luther King Day. The Iowa Republican Caucuses were on 1/15. After the Iowa Caucus results, Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Donald Trump. In Iowa, Trump won at least 20 delegates, at least DeSantis 8, Haley at least 7, and Ramaswamy at least 3. While you have learned I definitely have opinions, I try to keep politics per se out of my blogs. You do know, though, I am a Republican. As we approach the primary season, I have to try to pick a candidate. My decision will be a mix of healthcare and non-healthcare issues. So here is how I view it. As a Florida resident, I have until March 19 to make my decision on whom I want to win the GOP nomination. Forgive my delving into non-healthcare issues, but I believe the nation is on

January 12, 2024

January 12, 2024 No Comments

What Would A Nikki Haley Healthcare Agenda Look Like? The Republican debates continue with Donald Trump bowing out and Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley taking center stage. A recent CNN debate saw the two sparring, sometimes on healthcare issues. Both Haley and DeSantis declared that they would like to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a block grant. It is a horrible idea. With Chris Christie’s departure from the race and Haley rising in the polls, Kaiser Health News (KHN) did a feature on what a Haley administration’s healthcare agenda may look like. Additional article on Haley’s views on entitlement reform here: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/05/politics/nikki-haley-social-security-medicare-reform/index.html #gopprimary #haley #desantis #trump #healthcare #aca #obamacare Link to Article Fight (Verbal Anyway) Breaks Out at MedPAC Meeting A verbal clash broke out at a MedPAC meeting, with one member reasonably arguing that MedPAC is not truly as non-partisan as it says it is. I generally

Major Health Insurers Can Have Differing Profiles and Priorities

January 11, 2024 No Comments

With so much going on in the health insurance world, I thought it would be interesting to profile some of the largest insurers and discuss some of their priorities/activities. I picked the seven largest insurers owned by for-profit publicly traded companies. Collectively, they cover about 200 million people, or 60% of the U.S. population. Collectively, their revenues are over $1.25 trillion annually. While this is not meant to be an exhaustive review of financial information or advice on stock purchases, I combed investor relations filings and sites as well as the internet for this information. As you will see, some are focused a bit on diversification from insurance alone and strengthening services units. Others continue to be more pure-play insurers. A few points: Here goes: United Health Group 2022 Revenue: $324 billion Q3 2023 Membership: Commercial – 27.3 million Medicaid managed care – 8.0 million Medicare Advantage – 7.6 million

Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare Price Negotiations Should Have Small Impact On Innovation But Positive Impact On American Lives And What We Pay

January 8, 2024 No Comments

If you have read my book, The Healthcare Labyrinth (available at this website), you know I am a proponent of negotiating drug prices nationally as well as the Medicare drug price provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) more specifically. In my book, I argue a few fundamentals about drug prices in America: I am a Republican and I hold atypical views on drug pricing for my party – at least compared with most House and Senate GOP lawmakers. But the truth is, the last president and current president have proposed similar reforms on drug pricing. Respected think tanks with bipartisan representation support change, too. Polls also show support across parties for drastic changes to lower drug prices. I also don’t believe that if you support drug price negotiations and other reforms that somehow you are anti-free market. Negotiations and contractual agreements are a cornerstone of the free market. But

Risk Adjustment Basics and The Controversy Over Medicare RADV

January 4, 2024 No Comments

A few readers have sent me messages and asked me to detail some basics of risk adjustment (RA) — how it works, its benefits, and its challenges — and the controversy surrounding risk adjustment data validation (RADV) in Medicare Advantage (MA) specifically. RA is a complex world, but here is my best effort to keep the overview simple and then move to the coming RADV conflagration. While not practiced in the employer world because of the penetration of self-insured funds under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA, where the employer shoulders the entire burden of costs and insurers are not at risk), risk adjustment has become an important and common practice in MA, Medicaid managed care, and Exchange managed care. Quite simply, risk adjustment is critical to ensuring that health plans are compensated fairly to cover the costs of a given individual as well as the population as a

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