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November 1, 2024

Bipartisan Senate Team Wants To Move On Site Neutral Payments Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-LA, and Maggie Hassan, D-NH, unveiled their support for a bill that would begin paying hospital outpatient facilities lower Medicare reimbursements much more consistent with what other places of service receive for the same services – known as “site-neutral” payments. The bill would equalize payments for common outpatient services at hospital-owned offsite locations, ambulatory surgery centers, and other clinics. Check out my blog on site neutral payments here:  https://www.healthcarelabyrinth.com/it-is-time-for-site-neutral-payments-in-our-healthcare-system/ . We know that the lack of site neutral payments cost us huge sums and we need to reform this in Medicare. Commercial payments would then be transitioned as many commercial plans base rates on Medicare. The hospital lobby’s ridiculous arguments may finally be giving way to common sense. Kudos to Cassidy and Hassan. We need full site neutral payments as quickly as possible. There is the possibility

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October 31, 2024

Medicare Advantage Penetration Saves Medicare Dollars A new study from Elevance Health says that growth in Medicare Advantage (MA) leads to lower overall Medicare spending. This in part counters the shouts of MA opponents who cry about overpayments in the program. The study found that Medicare spending was $431 billion less from 2010 to 2020 than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted. The difference was per enrollee spending during the timeframe. The lower spending trend due to MA growth is most noticeable in midwestern and southern counties, but weaker in northwest and western counties. Researchers found that a 10% percent higher MA penetration in a county points to a 1.9% decrease in Medicare spending, correlating to a $204 decrease in per person spending. This resulted in up to $144 billion cumulative savings from 2012 to 2021. One theory is that higher penetration of MA introduces a change in provider behavior

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The Healthcare Labyrinth Blog’s Halloween Edition: More Gory News On HRAs and Manual Chart Reviews In Medicare Advantage

Latest investigative report will increase focus on Medicare Advantage risk adjustment In a May 9th blog here ( https://www.healthcarelabyrinth.com/will-cms-rein-in-risk-adjustment-submissions/ ), I made the case that a reasonable reform to tackle Medicare Advantage (MA) overpayments may be to bar MA health plans from getting credit from diagnoses reported only via health risk assessments (HRAs) and other manual chart reviews.  After all, enrollees should be treated by a physician for any disease states or conditions and providers should know their patients well enough to report all diagnoses over time on encounter or claim submissions. At the time, there was a growing body of evidence about the impact of HRAs and manual chart reviews on MA plan payments — specifically, that many plans were reporting diagnoses only from HRAs and manual chart reviews and not on subsequent encounters from doctors. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG)

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October 30, 2024

Speaker Johnson Says Obamacare Not In Jeopardy With control of the U.S. House coming down to a small number of the 435 seats in the chamber, House Speaker Mike Johnson said today that Obamacare is not on the so-called hit list. While he acknowledged that healthcare reform is certainly on the agenda, he did admit that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is part of the healthcare fabric. He disputed Democrats’ campaign assertions that he wants to repeal the law, saying: “The ACA is so deeply ingrained. We need massive reform to make this work, and we’ve got a lot of ideas on how to do that.” While Johnson said this, on the campaign trail Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance seem to indicate that they have a plan to introduce high-risk pools and move the adverse out of regular insurance pools.  Vance later claimed he meant reinsurance would be

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October 29, 2024

CMS Touts ACO Savings Touting its efforts to reform the Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) program by using value-based payments and care, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) saved Medicare $2.1 billion in 2023, the largest yearly savings in the program’s history. The MSSP is also known as Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). While this may have been the largest net savings, the reality is that there is at best a mixed record on the value-based care programs in the traditional system. Some studies suggest that the administrative costs of all of the programs exceed any savings. And the savings over time have been largely small. ACOs are perhaps the most successful, though. Additional articles: https://insidehealthpolicy.com/daily-news/cms-aco-stakeholders-tout-record-mssp-savings and https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/medicare-shared-savings-program-continues-deliver-meaningful-savings-and-high-quality-health-care (Some articles may require a subscription.) #medicare #vbc #valuebasedcare https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/mssp-acos-saves-medicare-21-billion-2023-largest-savings-program-history States and Medicaid Managed Care Plans Disagree on Rates While large Medicaid managed care plans

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October 28, 2024

Coverage Expansion Saves Overall Healthcare Costs I absolutely loved this Health Affairs Forefront Blog arguing for an expansion of coverage and getting to true affordable universal access. It explicitly asks: “It is thus an ideal time to ask: Why aren’t we covering everyone and working to make care affordable for all?” The authors dissect well opponents’ positions that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) drove up costs and that trimmed down benefit packages are just fine. They beat down both arguments with good statistics. First, citing national healthcare expenditure data, they show that the ACA insurance expansions did not lead to accelerated cost growth. Second, they note that high-deductible health plans have negative impacts. Third, they argue that expansion might actually drive down cost growth more. They conclude that “we can have universal coverage, affordable cost sharing, and continued cost growth deceleration.” These points line up with my proposals for healthcare

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With Fraud Rampant, Federal Court Decision Could Kill “Qui Tam” Lawsuits

Striking major provision of qui tam lawsuits could hurt efforts to reduce fraud There is little doubt that fraud, waste, and abuse (FWA) is rampant in the American healthcare system. FWA ranges from gross inefficiency and poor use of healthcare resources all the way to outright illegal activity. In between there are all sorts of over-utilization and excessive testing. Outright fraud is up to 10% of our entire healthcare expenditures each year. FWA is likely up to 25%. With national healthcare expenditures expected to hit $5 trillion in 2024, up to $500 billion each year is fraud and $2.5 trillion is combined fraudulent, wasteful, or abusive spending. That is what makes the recent U.S. District Court of the Middle District of Florida decision on so-called qui tam lawsuits (I will call them qui tams from here on) very troubling. Federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled last month that whistleblowers cannot file

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October 25, 2024

OIG Says CMS Does Not Ensure Part D Denies Part A Drugs A new audit report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG) is calling on CMS to enact certain reforms to prevent Medicare Part D from making additional payments for drugs that are supposed to be covered under the Part A benefit. Certain drugs that might normally be under Part D are under Part A when someone is in hospice or in certain facilities. Medicare Advantage and Part D plans should proactively determine what part of Medicare should be charged. This has been a long-standing issue in the Medicare program. The audit looked at more than 2.5 million prescription drug events (PDE) for 2018 through 2020. It looked at anomalies in a sample. Extrapolating the results, it says Part D improperly paid up to $465.1 million. About $245.4 million of that amount

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October 24, 2024

HHS OIG Accuses MA Plans Of Inflating Risk Adjustment Submissions In a follow-up to an earlier review, the Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG) concluded that Medicare Advantage (MA) insurers could be using health risk assessments (HRAs) to inflate risk adjustment payments through upcoding. The OIG says an estimated $7.5 billion in risk-adjusted payments tied to HRAs was received by MA insurers but the diagnoses substantiating them did not appear on separate encounters. Just 20 MA companies drove 80% of the questionable revenue. HHS OIG recommends a series of reforms. UnitedHealth Group received two-thirds of such risk-adjusted payments despite only managing 28% of MA enrollees. I have previously said MA plans should get ready for restrictions or elimination of HRAs and chart reviews in risk adjustment. However, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) did not concur with the HHS OIG findings, saying the study

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Election Is Close But Trump Has Electoral College Edge

A Trump victory would mean a sea change in healthcare policy The election is less than two weeks away. Given the huge sea change that could occur in healthcare policy, I thought it was time to devote a blog to my predictions on what might occur in the presidential, Senate and Houses races. I am a politics follower from way back. Early on in my career, I was a rightist youngster working for political action committees and political organizations. Later I was an editorial writer and political columnist prognosticating on state and local races. I also ran state legislative campaigns. As a governor’s appointee, I was smack in the middle of polls and political strategy. Predicting elections is a fool’s errand  What I learned through all of this is that predicting elections is very much a fool’s errand. It is never over until it is truly over and polls are

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