Tag Archives: Obama Administration

The Chameleon Which Is The Affordable Care Act

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08.14.2013

The Affordable Care Act, like a chameleon, is capable of changing its color or otherwise morphing to fit the pragmatic motives of its creator.

As I have said before, the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (PPACA) (or ACA for short) is law. Therefore, of late, I have attempted to focus on the reality of it and its ramifications for all of us whether we are currently uninsured, covered by our employer’s plan or have our own individual or family health insurance plan. The primary purpose of this blog is to educate and inform– not to editorialize. If the latter were my objective, I would establish a separate blog where I would rant and rave ad infinitum about all I see wrong with the Act and big government in general. But it is not, so writing for The MedPlus Messenger, I try to remain objective and minimize expression of my feelings. But it is difficult. Increasingly so. Each day I try to put more lipstick on this pig but each day I awaken to more news the White House has selectively chosen another segment of the ACA not to implement in 2014 pursuant to the law.
Yesterday’s headlines broke news that the caps on insured’s out-of-pocket (OOP) maximums–set to go in effect in 2014–have been delayed until 2015. This potentially doubles (or worse) the liability of an insured and benefits the insurance company by allowing it to avoid covering expenses above the current OOP’s. Do you believe that is the objective of the White House? To benefit the insurance companies? And I thought the whole reason for the ACA was to better protect the patient, consumer, insured member. After all, it is the Patient Protection … … … Act is it not?
So what was the motive behind the White House’s reprieve for insurance companies? “General Math” provides the answer. I.e.:
Lower patient out-of-pockets = higher insurance premiums
Higher insurance premiums = less participation in coverage and greater backlash against the ACA

 

Greater backlash = trouble for the Democrats in the 2014 mid-term elections
Conclusion = this reprieve was politically motivated

 

Reader and followers – if you can argue this to a different conclusion – please feel free to do so here for my erudition and that of the rest of us.

 
Admin – Kenton Henry
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Feature Articles:
Washington Times
By Tom Howell Jr.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
President Obama has granted yet another part of his health care law a delay, quietly announcing a one-year grace period before imposing a strict limit on consumers’ out-of-pocket medical expenses.
The delay means some health care plans in the group market will have until 2015 to begin paying for all expenses exceeding $6,350 for an individual’s out-of-pocket spending, or $12,700 for a family.
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SPECIAL COVERAGE: Health Care Reform
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Language on the delay has been posted on the Labor Department’s website since February, but it did not surface in the political arena until The New York Times reported on it Tuesday.
Mr. Obama used the limits as a key selling point when he pushed the Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2010. Now, Republicans are using the delay as part of last-ditch bids to dismantle the law before key implementation dates this fall.
“Burying this announcement online in a ‘maze of legal and bureaucratic language’ shows little concern for the promises with which this law was sold,” said House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, borrowing language from the Times article. “What else in the law isn’t working that we don’t yet know about?”
The Obama administration also announced in a pre-July Fourth blog posting that it was delaying the mandate that requires employers with at least 50 full-time employees to provide them with health care coverage.
For the Obama administration, the setbacks are ill-timed and leave officials trying to convince consumers that the delays don’t signal an inability to carry out other parts of the law.
Erin Shields Britt, spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the health care law is still implementing historic consumer protections from “the worst insurance company abuses, by banning discrimination based on pre-existing health conditions, ending lifetime and annual limits on what an insurance company will cover, and capping out-of pocket spending to protect Americans and their families.”
“The February guidance builds on these landmark consumer protections by requiring that health plans limit out-of-pocket spending for major medical coverage for the first time, in 2014, on time,” she said. “This single limit will apply to additional benefits in 2015.”
The newly reported delay arose because some employers and insurers use separate companies to administer major-medical coverage and drug benefits, resulting in separate out-of-pocket limits.
Because of this fractured landscape, parties needed time to streamline their data systems . The rule says that, for the first plan year after Jan. 1, 2014, the annual limit on out-of-pocket expenses will be satisfied if a group health plan that uses more than one service provider complies with the cap on major medical coverage and maintains a similar cap on the non-major medical coverage.
Even as it delays some parts, the administration has said the individual mandate requiring most Americans to have coverage remains in effect. Officials also are working feverishly to implement by Oct. 1 state-by-state health care exchanges where those without employer-based coverage can buy insurance with the help of tax credits.
A recent inspector general report suggested that Health and Human Services is months behind in setting up the federal data hub that will allow federal and state agencies to synchronize information about consumers on the exchanges.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, wrote to the Obama administration Monday to suggest that it delay the rollout of the exchanges.
Conservative lawmakers are waging a rhetorical war against Obamacare ahead of a spending showdown on Capitol Hill in September.

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Forbes

Pharma & Healthcare |

8/13/2013

Yet Another White House Obamacare Delay: Out-Of-Pocket Caps Waived Until 2015

WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 18: U.S. President Barack Obama (L) speaks as Assistant Attorney General of Justice Department’s civil rights division Thomas Perez (R) listens during a personnel announcement March 18, 2013 at the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. Perez has succeeded Hilda Solis as the U.S. Secretary of Labor. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

First, there was the delay of Obamacare’s Medicare cuts until after the election. Then there was the delay of the law’s employer mandate. Then there was the announcement, buried in the Federal Register, that the administration would delay enforcement of a number of key eligibility requirements for the law’s health insurance subsidies, relying on the “honor system” instead. Now comes word that another costly provision of the health law—its caps on out-of-pocket insurance costs—will be delayed for one more year.

According to the Congressional Research Service, as of November 2011, the Obama administration had missed as many as one-third of the deadlines, specified by law, under the Affordable Care Act. Here are the details on the latest one.

Obamacare contains a blizzard of mandates and regulations that will make health insurance more costly. One of the most significant is its caps on out-of-pocket insurance costs, such as co-pays and deductibles. Section 2707(b) of the Public Health Service Act, as added by Obamacare, requires that “a group health plan and a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage may not establish lifetime limits on the dollar value of benefits for the any participant or beneficiary.” Annual limits on cost-sharing are specified by Section 1302(c) of the Affordable Care Act; in addition, starting in 2014, deductibles are limited to $2,000 per year for individual plans, and $4,000 per year for family plans.

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Obamacare Increases Costs of College Health Plans by as Much as 1,112% Avik Roy Contributor

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. If you ban lifetime limits, and mandate lower deductibles, and cap out-of-pocket costs, premiums have to go up to reflect these changes. And unlike a lot of the “rate shock” problems we’ve been discussing, these limits apply not only to individually-purchased health insurance, but also to employer-sponsored coverage. (Self-insured employers are exempted.)

These mandates have already had drastic effects on a number of colleges and universities, which offer inexpensive, defined-cap plans to their healthy, youthful students. Premiums at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, N.C., for example, rose from $245 per student in 2011-2012 to between $2,507 in 2012-2013. The University of Puget Sound paid $165 per student in 2011-2012; their rates rose to between $1,500 and $2,000 for 2012-2013. Other schools have been forced to drop coverage because they could no longer afford it.

According to the law, the limits on out-of-pocket costs for 2014 were $6,350 for individual policies and $12,700 for family ones. But in February, the Department of Labor published a little-noticed rule delaying the cap until 2015. The delay was described yesterday by Robert Pear in the New York Times.

Delay needed to align ‘separate computer systems’

Notes Pear, “Under the [one-year delay], many group health plans will be able to maintain separate out-of-pocket limits for benefits in 2014. As a result, a consumer may be required to pay $6,350 for doctors’ services and hospital care, and an additional $6,350 for prescription drugs under a plan administered by a pharmacy benefit manager.”

The reason for the delay? “Federal officials said that many insurers and employers needed more time to comply because they used separate companies to help administer major medical coverage and drug benefits, with separate limits on out-of-pocket costs. In many cases, the companies have separate computer systems that cannot communicate with one another.”

The best part in Pear’s story is when a “senior administration official” said that “we had to balance the interests of consumers with the concerns of health plan sponsors and carriers…They asked for more time to comply.” Exactly how is it in consumers’ interests to pay far more for health insurance than they do already?

It’s not. Unless you have a serious, chronic condition, in which case you may benefit from the fact that law forces healthy people to subsidize your care. To progressives, this is the holy grail. But for economically rational individuals, it’s yet another reason to drop out of the insurance market altogether. For economically rational businesses, it’s a reason to self-insure, in order to get out from under these costly mandates.                         Patient groups upset

While insurers and premium-payers will be happy with the delay—whose legal justification is dubious once again—there are groups that grumbled. Specifically, groups representing those with chronic diseases, and the pharmaceutical companies whose costly drugs they will use. “The American Cancer Society American Cancer Society shares the concern” about the delay, says Pear, “and noted that some new cancer drugs cost $100,000 a year or more.” But a big part of the reason those drugs cost so much is because manufacturers know that government-run insurers will pay up.

“The promise of out-of-pocket limits was one of the main reasons we supported health reform,” says Theodore M. Thompson of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society National Multiple Sclerosis Society. “We have wonderful new drugs, the biologics, to treat rheumatoid arthritis,” said Patience H. White of the Arthritis Foundation. “But they are extremely expensive.”

The progressive solution to expensive problems? More subsidies. But subsidies don’t reduce the underlying cost of care. They only excuse the high prices that manufacturers and service providers already charge.

It’s one of the many aspects of Obamacare that should be repealed, if we are to combat the rate shock that the health law imposes on tens of millions of Americans. But that will require Republicans to come up with a smarter strategy than shutting down the government.

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http://allplaninsurance.com

House to Vote on Affordable Care Act Individual and Employer Mandates

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07.17.2013

Currently we have over 800,000 veterans awaiting decisions on their disability claims. The back log is so great–according to the most recent numbers available–the average wait time for a veteran is 15 months in Chicago, 16 months in New York and a year and a half in Los Angeles. Social Security’s disability program, which helps support 11 million Americans, will run through its trust fund in 2016, two years earlier than predicted. Couple this with the prediction Social Security, the fund that finances benefits for 44 million senior citizens and their survivors, will be exhausted by 2035 and Medicare, the health care program for those age 65 and over, will be have depleted its funds by 2024. Now consider a law has been passed which mandates health coverage for every American. Its objectives are largely, and initially, funded via subsidies from the federal government (you the tax payer). Can you possibly believe this is feasible given their track record? Given a federal debt of almost 17 trillion dollars? How long do you believe it will take before all private insurance companies are forced to withdraw from participation to be replaced by a single payer federally administrated program which can’t possibly be any more financially feasible than our government’s disability program, Social Security or Medicare?

Admin. – Kenton Henry

http://allplanhealthinsurance.com

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Today’s Feature Articles:

Legislation and Policy

House Votes To Target ACA Individual, Employer Mandates.

Coverage of the Obama Administration’s decision to delay the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate continues Wednesday, the same day the House is set to vote to further capitalize on the weak position they believe the move has put Democrats in. Most reports, some national in scope, focus on the House votes to delay both the employer and individual mandates, while others focus on the implications of both of these provisions.

McClatchy                          (7/17, Kumar) reports that on Wednesday, the Republican-ruled House is expected to vote to delay key parts of the Affordable Care Act, a move that “is the latest in a sweeping legislative and political campaign to weaken the 2010 law and raise even more opposition in the eyes of an already skeptical nation, especially as it heads into 2014 elections that will decide control of the Congress and set the stage for the 2016 campaign for the White House.” The back-to-back votes will determine “whether to delay insurance mandates for both employers and individuals.”

The Washington Times

(7/16, Howell) reports that “President Obama has threatened to veto” the bills. Meanwhile, “the votes will force Democrats to align with the president or distance themselves from the overhaul in the wake of its recent stumbles.” In addition, it has put the “Office of Management and Budget in the awkward position of threatening, in the case of the employer mandate, to kill a bill that would reflect the White House’s own decision-making.”

CNN

(7/16, Walsh) reports that “most House Democrats are expected to oppose two House Republican bills on Wednesday that would delay key provisions of Obamacare,” according to House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD).

The Hill

(7/17, Baker) “Healthwatch” blog reports that the bill to delay the individual mandate “would cut the deficit, but would cause insurance premiums to rise,” according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Implications Of Employer Mandate Delay Still Unclear. The AP

(7/17, Alonso-Zaldivar) reports on the “domino effect” that is currently “undercutting” the Affordable Care Act: the Obama Administration’s delaying of the law’s employer mandate could “weaken” the individual mandate, because the requirement that companies report health insurance details for employers has also been pushed back. As the article explains, “without employers validating who’s covered, a scofflaw could lie, and the government would have no easy way to check.” The piece calls this yet “another incentive for uninsured people to ignore a new government requirement that for many will cost hundreds of dollars.”

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Not All Insurers Game for State Exchanges: The Consumer Impact

By Kate Rogers

Published July 11, 2013

FOXBusiness

As more insurers decide to pack up and leave certain states as health exchanges start to take form, experts say consumers are going to be left  feeling the pain.

Over the last few weeks, several departure announcements have sent a ripple through the health insurance industry, as companies weigh whether or not they want to play ball under Obamacare. So far, California has experienced the biggest migration  with Aetna (AET), UnitedHealthcare (UNH) and Cigna (CI) leaving the state’s exchange, Covered California.

Aetna also reportedly sent out a note to select customers last week, warning that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is “changing health insurance.” Recipients were customers across the country with non-grandfathered health plans, meaning their plan was not in effect on March 23, 2010 and wouldn’t carry over under new state and federal exchange regulations under ACA.

“This includes adding preventative care and essential health benefits. The ACA also ends medical underwriting. Due to these and other changes, many people will pay more for their health insurance coverage in 2014 than they do today,” the letter stated according to the carrier.

Wellmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield also decided not to list on the individual exchange in Iowa for 2014, due to a lack of information available in the state, according to a spokesperson for the Iowa Insurance Division.

Fifteen states and the District of Colombia are in the process of creating their insurance exchanges before the 2014 deadline; when individuals must purchase insurance or face a fine for failing for comply with the individual mandate. The employer mandate has been pushed back to 2015, and some in the GOP including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, (R-VA), are calling for the individual mandate to be rolled back as well.

More or Less Competition for Consumers?

Some experts say the recent departures hint consumers will have limited health-insurance choices thanks to the regulatory burdens of the law. Basic supply and demand dictates that with fewer insurers to choose from, consumers will have limited options and potentially higher prices, says Michael Cannon, director of Health Policy Studies at the CATO Institute.

A similar “exodus” occurred within the first six months of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Cannon says, when child-only care was enacted. Seventeen major insurers dropped child-only coverage, in an attempt to skirt the law’s new regulations and increased costs. The same may begin to take shape in the individual market.

“The program says you can’t charge higher premiums to the sick, so you have a situation where only low-risk consumers would be charged a premium much higher than their regular costs, so only people who buy it would be those who really needed it,” he says.

The employer mandate rollback is also a factor in the situation, says Grace-Marie Turner, founder of the Galen Institute, a health and tax policy research organization, as employers will now be incentivized to drop coverage and push their employees into the exchanges until 2015.

“It’s using employers to push more people into the exchanges,” Turner says.

Fewer insurers in state exchanges mean less competition, bottom line, she adds. “The whole point is we want more players, and more competition.”

Why California Matters

What happens in California is a big deal for the future of the Affordable Care Act, says Taylor Burke, associate professor and program director, MPH in Health Policy, at George Washington University.

“It’s an exit out the individual market, but [the insurers] only represent 8% of the individual market companies in the state,” Burke says. “California has the 7th largest economy on the globe, so whatever happens in California is a big deal for the stand up of the state exchanges.”

He points to two main reasons insurers leave a state: they don’t like the price points being offered in the exchanges nor the coverage they would have to offer under Obamacare’s 10 essential health benefits.

“In California, you can make the argument that there would be less choice, but if they stay in the market, their prices would be off the charts,” he says. “It would be a thing on the shelf, a high-ticket item that you couldn’t afford anyway.”

And if insurers take too long to make the decision, that may impact them negatively as well, he says.

“No one will want to buy their product. There’s a lot of hemming and hawing, but if the price point is too high, no one will buy it.”

But can consumers blame the insurer for higher prices? Turner says no, it’s the nature of the law’s regulations.

“Insurers can’t help the demands on the benefits they will have to cover—it will absolutely be more expensive,” she says. “It’s like going to buy a car with every accessory in the books—heated seats, fancy wheels, satellite radio, and saying you can’t charge more for it.”

What Insurers are Deciding

Robert Zirkenbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), says each individual company will have to make their own decisions about which states to participate in as exchange bids come in.

“It will be based on a variety of reasons, but plans are offering coverage on the exchange, some will be outside the exchange—there will be options for consumers,” Zirkenbach says. “It will depend on the state and regulatory environment.”

He says the AHIP wants competition among insurers to keep consumer prices in check.  “Choice and competition is a good thing—when states have been setting up their exchanges, we are trying to encourage this,” he says.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners says insurers who are leaving these markets are likely doing so because they have core businesses in other segments, including the large group market.

“The carriers we have seen exiting the individual market are not major players in that market segment, and therefore we don’t anticipate a major disruption of coverage for a large portion of the market,” a spokesperson said in an email statement. “Each insurance company is making decisions regarding its participation in exchanges based upon a number of factors.  Some are opting to participate in the exchanges, while others are not; however, nearly all of the requirements that apply to policies sold on the exchange also apply to policies sold outside the exchange, so insurers will not be avoiding a lot of requirements by opting out of the exchanges.”