qotd: Provider rate cuts and new benefit restrictions in Medicaid

Kaiser Family Foundation

September 2010

Hoping for Economic Recovery, Preparing for Health Reform: A Look at Medicaid Spending, Coverage and Policy Trends

by Vernon K. Smith, Ph.D., Kathleen Gifford and Eileen Ellis

In FY 2010, 48 states implemented at least one new policy to control cost and 46 states plan to do so in FY 2011 with some states reporting program reductions in multiple areas. While many states mentioned that ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) helped to avoid or mitigate provider rate cuts, states still took action in this area. In FY 2010, 39 states implemented a provider rate cut or freeze compared to 33 states in FY 2009. In FY 2011, 37 states have planned provider rate restrictions. More than any other area, provider rates are linked to economic conditions. Under budget pressure, states turn to rate cuts to have an immediate budget impact and when conditions improve states are able to restore or enhance rates. States must balance the need to control costs with ensuring that provider rates are sufficient to maintain participation and access to services for enrollees.

In FY 2010, 20 states implemented benefit restrictions, the largest number in one year since the surveys began in 2001 and double the number from FY 2009. In addition to this record level of benefit restrictions in FY 2010, 14 states have planned benefit restrictions in FY 2011. These benefit restrictions include the elimination of covered benefits as well as the application of utilization controls or limits for existing benefits.

Under health reform, Medicaid will be expanded to cover nearly all individuals with incomes below 133 percent of poverty resulting in a large adult expansion in most states, particularly adults without dependent children who had historically been barred from coverage under the program. This expansion provides the foundation for new coverage under health reform. Not surprisingly, Medicaid officials are playing a lead role in preparing for health reform implementation, in many cases alongside insurance commissioners. Some of the key challenges that states will face in implementing reform include implementing the Medicaid expansion, transitioning to a new income eligibility methodology for Medicaid, setting up Health Insurance Exchanges and re-designing eligibility systems to coordinate with the Exchanges. These challenges are magnified by recent administrative cuts and state workforce reductions limiting states' capacity to focus on new responsibilities. Many states said that they need

timely regulations and guidance as well as financial support to help them move forward and meet tight implementation timelines.

http://www.kff.org/medicaid/upload/8105_ES.pdf

Comment:  In spite of the infusion of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), states are implementing Medicaid provider rate cuts and implementing Medicaid benefit restrictions. Yet with the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Medicaid program will be greatly expanded to include almost everyone with incomes below 133 percent of poverty.

Medicaid always has been and always will be a welfare program for low-income individuals. Serving a population that lacks an adequate political voice, it also has been and always will be a chronically underfunded program.

Most physicians who do accept Medicaid patients do so, in spite of inadequate reimbursement, because they believe that everyone should have health care. With a much greater volume of Medicaid patients some physicians will certainly face the dilemma of crowd-out of privately insured patients because of the Medicaid overload in their appointment schedules. 

Imagine a physician facing Medicaid overload, declining net revenues, and frustrations of trying to help patients negotiate a system with diminishing benefits and with impaired access to specialized services because of a lack of willing providers. 

Certainly some physicians will feel that they have no other choice than to close their practices to Medicaid patients. What will that do to other physician practices that are already overloaded with Medicaid patients?

Adverse selection can sink insurers, but it would be much more tragic to see adverse selection sink the practices of those physicians who are trying their hardest to do the right thing.

If everyone were in the same health care program, say an improved Medicare for all, an underfunded, segregated sector of stigmatized and humiliated welfare patients wouldn't even exist. They would have access to the same care the rest of us have. Wouldn't that be nice for a change.

qotd: What if everyone had Medicare?

San Francisco Chronicle

September 24, 2010

What if everyone had Medicare?

By Henry Abrons

The Census Bureau released its annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage in the United States earlier this month, and it's no surprise to learn that we're in bad shape. The number of people living in poverty was 43.6 million (14.3 percent), up sharply from 2008, and real per capita income declined 1 percent.

Looking at health insurance, the situation is truly dire. There was a dramatic spike in the uninsured - 4.3 million more, to a record 50.7 million - in spite of the expansion of government health insurance rolls by nearly 6 million.

Those opposing government health insurance should ponder the fact that private health insurance coverage dropped to the lowest level since comparable data were first collected in 1987. On the other hand, those who look to the new health reform law - the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) - for a solution should be deeply disturbed.

PPACA was not designed to provide universal coverage. In fact, if the new law works as planned, in 2019 there will still be 23 million uninsured. Yet the consequence of being uninsured can be lethal: Research published last year shows about 45,000 deaths annually can be linked to lack of coverage. That number is probably more than 50,000 today.

As Don McCanne, senior health policy fellow at Physicians for a National Health Program, has observed, PPACA is an underinsurance program. Employers, seeing little relief, will expand the present trend of shifting more insurance and health care costs onto employees.

Individuals buying plans in the new insurance exchanges (which won't start until 2014) will discover that subsidies are inadequate to avoid financial hardship. Inevitably, they will end up with underinsurance, spotty coverage and high deductibles.

And workers who are unemployed or without employment-based insurance will move into Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California), where providers are reimbursed at such low rates that many will not accept patients.

When Congress passed the new law last spring, it based its decision on a faulty assumption - namely, that the rest of the population will have sustainable private health insurance. But between 2008 and 2009, the number of people covered by private health insurance decreased from 201.0 million to 194.5 million, and the number covered by employment-based health insurance declined from 176.3 million to 169.7 million.

If this trend continues, as it's bound to do under current economic conditions, the ranks of the uninsured will expand and the new law will fall far short of the mark - either the cost will exceed projections, or coverage will be need to be reduced.

The Census Bureau report underscores the urgency of going beyond the Obama administration and swiftly implementing a more fundamental reform - a single-payer national health insurance program - improved Medicare for all.

Improved Medicare-for-all, by replacing our dysfunctional patchwork of private health insurers with a single, streamlined system of financing, would save about $400 billion annually in unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy. That's enough to cover all of those now uninsured and to provide every person in the United States with quality, comprehensive coverage.

A single-payer plan would also furnish us with effective cost-control tools, like the ability to negotiate fees and purchase medications in bulk. It would permit patients to go to the doctor and hospital of their choice.

Short of a full national plan, some states, like ours, are eyeing a state-based single-payer model. The new health law allows states to experiment with different models of reform, but not until 2017. Congress should move that date forward. There is no time to waste.

(Henry Abrons, M.D., is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program-California - www.pnhpcalifornia.org.)

http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-24/opinion/24086986_1_health-insurance-health-reform-law-universal-coverage

Comment:  Henry Abrons' message is certainly very familiar to supporters of an improved Medicare for all, but we have to keep repeating it over and over until more people start listening.

qotd: Incomes and health costs

U.S. Census Bureau

September 28, 2010

Census Bureau Releases 2009 American Community Survey Data

Median Household Income

Real median household income in the United States fell between 2008 and 2009 — decreasing by 2.9 percent from $51,726 to $50,221.

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/cb10-cn78.html

And...

Hewitt

September 27, 2010

U.S. Health Care Cost Rate Increases Reach Highest Levels in Five Years, According to New Data from Hewitt Associates

According to Hewitt's analysis, the average total health care premium per employee for large companies will be $9,821 in 2011, up from $9,028 in 2010. The amount employees will be asked to contribute toward this cost is $2,209, or 22.5 percent of the total health care premium. This is up 12.4 percent from 2010, when employees contributed $1,966, or 21.8 percent of the total health care premium. Average employee out-of-pocket costs, such as copayments, coinsurance and deductibles, are expected to be $2,177 in 2011—a 12.5 percent increase from 2010 ($1,934). These projections mean that in a decade, total health care premiums will have more than doubled, from $4,083 in 2001 to $9,821 in 2011. Employees' share of medical costs—including employee contributions and out-of-pocket costs—will have more than tripled, from $1,229 in 2001 to $4,386 in 2011.

http://www.hewittassociates.com/Intl/NA/en-US/AboutHewitt/Newsroom/PressReleaseDetail.aspx?cid=9106

And...

Milliman Medical Index

The annual Milliman Medical Index (MMI) reports total annual medical spending for a typical American family of four covered by an employer-sponsored preferred provider organization (PPO) program. The MMI represents the total cost of payments to healthcare providers, and excludes the non-medical administrative component of health plan premiums.

The total 2010 medical cost for a typical American family of four is $18,074.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2010/may/the-mmi-proves-that-ppaca-is-already-a-failure

Comment:  Think about this. Median household income is now back down to $50,000. The average cost of health care for a family of four with an employer-sponsored PPO plan is $18,000. Premiums for employer-sponsored plans have doubled in the last decade, while the employees' spending on health care has tripled!

The Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act (PPACA) was specifically designed to leave the large market of employer-sponsored private health plans intact - the "you can keep the insurance you have..." strategy for reform. Most individuals and families will see little change as a result of PPACA since they will continue to receive their insurance coverage through their employment.

Very specifically, employees of larger companies will not see premium subsidies like for those who purchase plans in the state exchanges, nor will they see the subsidies for out-of-pocket expenses. The architects of PPACA decided that employer contributions to the premiums would obviate the need for subsidies - glibly suppressing the fact that employer contributions are actually paid by the employees in the form of forgone wage increases.

The health care financing structure of PPACA is an unmitigated disaster. For most families, health care costs will encroach at increasing percentages on their budgets for basic essentials such as housing, food, and transportation, not to mention education, retirement plans, and other discretionary expenses. The $18,000 in average health care costs for a family of four is already over one-third of the median household income of $50,000.

We desperately need to enact policies that will bring costs under control while establishing an equitable method of financing that makes health care affordable for everyone. PPACA doesn't even come close. What will work is a single-payer national health program - an improved Medicare that includes everyone.

(Why aren't people talking about this? Why is all of the media coverage about the tweaks to our fragmented, dysfunctional system - tweaks that will never get us there? Doesn't anyone care?)