On December 21, 2022, the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) issued a proposed rule aimed at advancing health equity and mitigating health disparities while minimizing administrative burden. The HHS Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2024 (“Proposed Rule”) would streamline ACA health plan selection, simplify marketplace enrollment, and expand access to care for low-income and medically underserved consumers through revision of network adequacy and essential community provider (“ECP”) standards. These proposed changes came in the midst of a record-breaking ACA Marketplace enrollment period, highlighting the increased demand for affordable health care coverage.Continue Reading HHS Proposes Health Insurance Market Reforms for 2024

Direct Primary Care. Direct primary care (DPC) is a style of clinical practice in which a healthcare provider (usually a physician or a physician group) offers primary care services to patients who pay a monthly membership fee for the provision of primary care services at no additional charge to the patient/member. For its most ardent enthusiasts, DPC may best be described as it is on the Direct Primary Care Coalition’s home page:

Direct Primary Care (DPC) is an innovative alternative payment model improving access to high functioning healthcare with a simple, flat, affordable membership fee.  No fee-for-service payments.  No third party billing.  The defining element of DPC is an enduring and trusting relationship between a patient and his or her primary care provider.  Patients have extraordinary access to a physician of their choice, often for as little as $70 per month, and physicians are accountable first and foremost to their patients.  DPC is embraced by health policymakers on the left and right and creates happy patients and happy doctors all over the country!
Continue Reading Direct Primary Care Legislation Continues its Roll Across the Country: Florida Governor Rick Scott signs Florida House Bill 37, Direct Primary Care Agreements

Today, President Trump signed into law a sweeping tax reform bill passed by the House and the Senate on Wednesday that will materially affect virtually every sector in the economy, including, perhaps to a greater degree than others, the healthcare sector. Between the bill’s repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate penalty tax and other pertinent provisions, we might reasonably expect to see:
Continue Reading President Trump Signs Tax Reform Bill Into Law

The fifth Open Enrollment period under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) started on November 1st, and will continue for a scant 45 days ending on December 15, 2017. This year, not only has the Open Enrollment been cut in half, but obstacles abound – obstacles that were not part of the 2016 Open Enrollment Period. For example:

  • Healthcare.gov is undergoing maintenance that could interfere with access during the Open Enrollment Period;
  • Federal support for Open Enrollment outreach and advertising is substantially lower this year than it has been in prior Open Enrollment periods; and
  • The number of health insurers participating in the exchanges has dropped significantly from last year (prompted in part by well-founded concerns regarding the future of federal cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments), and in some counties, only one plan is available to individuals and families seeking coverage through the exchanges.

Continue Reading Clean Up on Aisle 12! The Obamacare Pop-Up Store is Open but Stocks are Limited

Yesterday, Thursday, October 12th, on the heels of the recent and repeated failures to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), President Donald Trump signed an executive order nominally aimed at increasing competition in the healthcare marketplace, but widely believed to be driven by a desire to undermine the ACA. The executive order broadly tasks the Labor Department with changing the current policies on the accessibility of certain healthcare plans. The coming policy changes are speculated to expand the market for healthcare plans that are exempt from many of the regulations under the ACA. Such healthcare plans are known as Association Health Plans (“AHPs”).
Continue Reading Trump Administration Takes Aim at ACA With AHP Executive Order

Even as Senators continue to consider “Graham-Cassidy,” the latest Affordable Care Act (ACA) repeal legislation, insurance markets are already reacting to uncertainty and instability brought about by persistent GOP efforts to upend the post-ACA insurance landscape. Between the Trump Administration’s ongoing refusal to commit to long-term funding of the ACA’s cost-sharing reductions (CSRs) and legislative overtures to repeal key portions of the ACA, premiums have increased, insurers have exited state exchanges, and access to health care coverage has been compromised.
Continue Reading Effects of Insurance Marketplace Uncertainty

The Future of CSRs – A Tale Told in Tweets. In follow-up to our May 5, 2017 blog post, “ACA Cost-Sharing Reductions: An Uncertain Future,” on August 16, 2017, the Trump Administration made an announcement (Announcement) that it will continue to fund cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments to insurers in accordance with the CSR provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for the month of August. The Announcement did not include any commitments to fund CSR payments in September or anytime thereafter.
Continue Reading ACA Cost-Sharing Reductions– A Momentary Reprieve and Ongoing Doubts

The ancient Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times” – certainly springs to mind these days.  What does the election of Donald Trump mean for the healthcare industry, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and current healthcare market trends?  Let’s take a quick look at the likely effects of the election, but first let’s set the stage:

Background Data:

  • Per a July 2016 federal Department of Health and Human Services study, it is estimated that 18% of 2016 personal income in aggregate will be spent on healthcare, with 5% of the population accounting for nearly half of the estimated $3.3 trillion 2016 healthcare spending and 50% of the population spending less than $3,000 each.
  • The healthcare cost reduction effect of the Great Recession has dissipated, with an anticipated healthcare cost increase of over 5% per year projected through 2025. The economic drag on the U.S. economy of healthcare spending has returned to almost pre-recession levels, and accountable care organization (ACO) savings to date have been relatively nominal.
  • Once aged in, Medicare will have over 70 million Baby Boomer generation seniors to care for…and with rising life expectancy comes greater lifetime healthcare costs.
  • The United States will have a shortfall of doctors before 2025, with a significant primary care shortfall expected, a significant shortage of doctors available who accept Medicaid and the U.S. ranked as the 24th of 28 countries by the number of doctors per thousand people among the Organization for Economic Development countries.
  • 20 million people were afforded insurance under ACA programs, including over 9 – 11 million (varies depending on source studies) in 2016 through the insurance exchanges and the remainder through Medicaid expansion in 32 states (as of September 2016).
  • Approximately 73 million Americans were covered by Medicaid or CHIP. Federal subsidies for Medicaid expansion are to trend downwards to 90% by 2020.  A growing number of states are moving toward managed Medicaid programs in an effort to contain costs that, in some instances, previously threatened to bankrupt state budgets in the absence of further tax increases.

Continue Reading “May You Live in Interesting Times” – Some Healthcare Predictions for the Trump Administration’s First Year