Cantwell Amendment Another Handoff to States

As the Senate Finance Committee concludes its mark-up of health care reform legislation an interesting dynamic is emerging: Senators are increasingly turning to the states to address some of the more pressing challenges the reform effort is designed to address.

Yesterday I wrote about a compromise being circulated by moderate Senator Tom Carper. The Carper Compromise would allow states to create government-run insurance programs, networks of co-ops or the like. That proposal has yet to be brought to the Senate Finance Committee and may not be. Instead, it could be offered later in the process as the Senate seeks to bridge the gap between the Finance Committee’s bill and legislation passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee – which calls for a robust government-run plan.

Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee has adopted a proposal offered by Senator Maria Cantwell. which gives states the option “to negotiate with insurance companies for lower rates on health coverage policies for those living barely above the poverty line and provides federal dollars to pay for it,” according to the McClatchy news service. The Cantwell Amendment is modeled after a program currently in operation in Senator Cantwell’s home state of Washington and would benefit families between 133 percent and 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (up to $21,660 for individuals and $44,100 for a family of four). Senator Cantwell staff claims such plans could cover up to 30 million of the nation’s uninsured according to the Associated Press. This, of course, assumes that state’s out-reach efforts are successful in bringing those eligible for such a program into the system. There are millions of individuals eligible for existing programs like Medicaid and children health programs who remain unenrolled across the country.

Senator Cantwell’s amendment is not an alternative to the public option, the issue most dramatically dividing Democratic liberals from their moderate and conservative colleagues in Congress. Bridging that gap will require something along the lines of the Carper Compromise. (This doesn’t mean Senator Cantwell’s proposal wasn’t controversial. It was adopted on a 12-11 vote with Democrat Blanche Lincoln joining all 10 Republican members of the panel in voting against it).  What inclusion of the Cantwell Amendment in the Senate Finance Committee’s legislation does underscore is the likelihood Congress will be giving states a central role to play in making health care reform real.

The benefits of this approach include keeping health care decisions closer to consumers and allowing for different approaches to meet the differing needs of the states. One of the downsides to relying on states, however, is that it eliminates savings that might have been achieved by more uniform, national standards and regulations.

Another outcome of shifting responsibility and power to the states under health care reform: even after Congress completes its work, intense legislative battles will remain. Only the venue will move from Washington, D.C. to a state capital near you.

Health Care is Local

Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously noted that “all politics is local.” And he’s right. He was not talking about the rules of the political game. Those are established by a national constitution and subject to state laws as well as local ones. He meant that the political dynamics of each district are what determines the ideological shading of a district.

Some examples are obvious: compare the voting record of legislators from Massachusetts and Utah. Others are less so: Republican Senator Charles Grassley had been a reasonable voice on health care reform until he remembered he was up for reelection in 2010 and saw how conservative Iowans were responding to unfounded claims of “death panels” and the like; he is now embracing aspects of the silliness.

Health care is local, too. The medical delivery system in Los Angeles looks far different from the one in Cheyenne. Even what’s considered standard treatment varies from community to community. And as Dr. Atul Gawande demonstrated in his New Yorker article, the cost of care varies greatly among localities based on medical provider’s approach to health care.

How the local nature of politics and health care interact underscores the complexity of health care reform. Because health care is local, what’s broken in the current system varies from place-to-place. Because politics and is local, acceptable solutions vary depending on locale. It may just be a coincidence, but it is worth noting that the initial advocate for community-based health insurance co-operatives, Senator Kent Conrad, hails from North Dakota where rural electricity co-operatives are common while many of those claiming only a government-run health plan will do represent urban areas.

Recognizing this dynamic, the the House Energy and Commerce Committee has described HR 3200’s impact on each Congressional District. (My thanks to Dwight Mazzone for bringing these documents to my attention). Reading through these is a glimpse of the richness and variety of America.

For example, in Wyoming (which has one Representative for the entire state) up to 19,000 businesses would be eligible for tax credits to pay for health insurance, 7,400 seniors would benefit from reducing brand name drug costs, much of the $23 million in uncompensated care hospitals and health providers face would be eliminated, and the tax surcharge to pay for reform would impact 3,120 households.

Compare this to the Los Angeles area district represented by Henry Waxman, the Chair of the Energy and Commerce. In California’s 30th District up to 14,300 businesses would be eligible for the subsidy, 5,200 seniors would see lower prescription costs, hospitals and other providers would be relieved of much of the $85 million in uncompensated care they deal with today, while 22,100 households would pay the tax surcharge.

The statistics cited come from legitimate sources, but are presented in order to muster support for HR 3200. Were the same information to be presented by House Republicans it would no doubt have a different spin. Nonetheless, the information is a treasure trove of insight into the local politics and health care that drives the health care reform debate.

These statistics should also give lawmakers demanding a single, one-size-fits-all solution to health care reform pause. As I’ve argued before, state health care reform efforts usually fail. America’s health care system is too large, too interrelated and too complex to be reformed on a state-by-state basis. States lack the tools needed to make meaningful changes work; the national government has those tools. However, the reforms themselves could benefit from local implementation. For instance, instead of creating one, national government-run health plan to compete with private carriers, enabling the creation of local health insurance co-operatives to generate competition where it is needed is more appropriate.

Finding the balance between federal and local management of health care is critical to a well-functioning medical system. It is also good politics.

Health Care Reform: Getting Ready for Crunch Time

For health care reform, the next few weeks will be critical. Congressional committees are poised to pass legislation (to put this in perspective, this never happened during the Clinton Administration’s reform efforts in 1993-94). President Obama and his aides will become even more engaged concerning the legislative language they would like to see Congress enact. Senate moderates will begin taking sides on critical issues. In short, this is when it all starts coming together. In the next few weeks, it will become clear if Washington will enact health care reform and, if so, what it will look like.

Events will move quickly, so I’m clearing out some short items that have been lingering in my “to blog” folder for awhile. They are a random assortment of items unlikely to become stand-alone posts. Taken as a whole, however, I hope they provide some useful background to the history about to unfold.

1. Health care reform ideas are flying around the Capital in ever increasing numbers. Keeping track of them all can be a challenge. Good thing there’s the Kaiser Family Foundation’s health care reform proposal comparison tool. It makes comparing the entire plan or just particular issues across the various proposals simple.
2. One of the plans we have yet to see details on will be presented in the next few days in the Senate Finance Committee. They are working hard to construct a legitimately bi-partisan proposal, which means it has the greatest likelihood of foreshadowing the legislation likely to emerge from Congress. To get an early taste of the coming debate in that committee, check out the dialogue between Senator Charles Grassley and Senator Charles Schumer on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
3. I’m a fan of the FiveThirtyEight.com blog. The site applies rigorous math to political topics. Very rigorous math: it’s prediction of election outcomes during the presidential primaries and the general election were eerily accurate. The site has a left-leaning bias on some topics, but overall, its posts are more nerdish than ideological. Recently it did an interesting analysis on how campaign contributions may derail a public option plan. Of course, whether Senators vote a certain way because of the contributions they receive or they receive contributions because of the way they vote is an open issue (which, to his credit, the author acknowledges). But the issue of causality does not change his conclusion: unless the several stars fall into place, a public option is unlikely to be part of the final health care reform package.
4. Need more evidence a government-run health plan is losing momentum? As noted last week, Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee feel the need to dress their public plan proposal in moderate clothing. Then there’s White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel making clear today the Administration is willing to accept legislation without a public plan. According to the Wall Street Journal Mr. Emanuel says “’The goal is to have a means and a mechanism to keep the private insurers honest. The goal is non-negotiable; the path is’ negotiable.”  Mr. Emanuel goes on to say creating a public plan only if the private market proves incapable of offering competition would be one acceptable solution.
5. Is a government-run plan even needed for health care reform to be meaningful? Uwe Reinhardt, an economics professor at Princeton, uses the German health care system as evidence it is not. This is not to say that the German system is an appropriate model for the United States, but it does undermine the argument that health care reform will only work if the government is both referee and player.
6. All the health care reform attention is focused on what’s happening in Washington. Some folks think this is a mistake. Instead, the federal government should simply enable states to pass their own reform plans. This would allow solutions to reflect local values and enable the best ideas to emerge over time. I disagree. States lack the levers of power necessary to reform something as complex and critical as health care reform. In a post from 2007 I cited an article by Ezra Klein describing the many failed state health care reform efforts. That doesn’t mean, however, that every health care decision needs to be made at the national level. Meaningful structural change — and the financing required to implement it – requires the federal government. Implementing those changes can be managed and administered at the regional, state or even local level.
7. The status quo is on life support. Health care costs are rising faster than either general inflation or wages. (To see for yourself, check out Tom’s Inflation Calculator). We have the opportunity today to enact responsible, meaningful reform. Without such intervention, the current system will eventually deteriorate until unwise and extreme proposals make sense. Fortunately, what’s likely to emerge from the current debate will be determined by moderates. This doesn’t mean the reforms won’t be flawed, but it does mean that there’s a chance for responsible reform sooner rather than later.
8. The advocates of a single payer system know that the status quo is unsustainable. It is why some of them will oppose whatever moderate reforms emerge from the current health care reform debate. They are like a doctor who sees surgery as the solution to every ailment. If the patient takes medication, and it works, they don’t get to cut. Similarly, if reasonable changes increase access to affordable, quality health care coverage and reduces overall spending, the need for a single payer solution vanishes.
9. Meanwhile, back at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver crunches some poll result numbers and points out that moderates are disappointed with President Obama’s handling of health care reform. Whether these results show President Obama needs to get more specific in describing his health care reforms (as Mr. Silver concludes) or whether he needs to focus more on pushing the right health care reform, is something to ponder.

What if California Had Passed Health Care Reform?

California lawmakers recently passed a budget that, at least on paper, may, perhaps close the $42 billion shortfall the state faces in this and the next fiscal year. The budget was due before July 2008. So it was a bit less than eight months overdue. One of the methods required to close the gap was to reduce funding to some of the state’s neediest citizens.

Lawmakers inability to find a budget compromise in a timely fashion and in such a cruel fashion speaks volumes about a dangerous and dysfunctional political system. It brings into question whether California lawmakers can be trusted with something as critical to its citizens as the nature of its health care system, which would have happened had California enacted Assembly Bill X1-1 last year. Given the state’s current economic and political problems, what would have happened had health care reform passed in early 2009?

ABX1-1, you may recall, passed the Assembly, was supported by the Governor, but was defeated in the Senate early last year. A major reason for its demise was a Legislative Analyst’s Office Report on ABX1-1 that raised serious concerns about the state’s ability to implement the reform package within the $14 billion price tag touted by its supporters, primarily Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. then Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and then President Pro Tem Don Perata. Using what it considered to be optimistic assumptions of the bill’s sponsors, the LAO concluded the plan would be running a deficit of $300 million. Using more conservative (and what the LAO called, more realistic assumptions), it estimated the health care plan would be running a deficit of $1.5 billion in it’s fifth year and have run up a cumulative deficit of $4 billion during it’s first half-decade of operation.

Supporters of the health care reform bill protested that the LAO report underestimated savings from fixing the state’s broken health care system. They relied on a study conducted by professor Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that demonstrated the reform package was a net financial plus for the state.

Yet the Gruber report made some questionable assumptions. The LAO report noted, for example, that the Gruber model “is not designed to estimate the effects of an economic slowdown on population responses” to the various elements of the reform.”  Translation:  if the economy tanks the Gruber analysis doesn’t work. That’s because, according to the LAO report, ABX1-1’s proponents assumed then current growth rates would continue over time. “For example, the cost of expanding Medi-Cal to adults was grown at the projected growth rate for current Medi-Cal expenses, while the wage-based employer fee was projected to grow at the projected growth rate for wages.”

But tank the economy did (and has). Time and again, the LAO report, delivered to the Legislature on January 22, 2008, warned against the danger of mis-predicting the future. “California is subject periodically to slowdowns in economic activity. During these times, unemployment often increases. This reduces the number of Californians with access to employer-provided healthcare. A recession similar to the one California experienced in the early 1990s could result in hundreds of thousands of Californians losing access to employer-provided health care, thereby increasing the costs for the [health care reform] plan.”

Statistics published by the California Economic Development Department puts this into context. In January 2008, when the LAO report was published, the state’s unemployment rate had been below six percent for three years, dipping below five percent in 2006. This compares to the state’s unemployment rate during the 1990s recession of more than nine percent during most of 1992 and 1993, peaking during several months at 9.9 percent. California’s current unemployment, at least during January 2009, was 10.1 percent. The worst case scenario the LAO warned against has arrived.

I don’t bring all this up to deny the need for substantial health care reform. For the state and national economies to recover sooner-than-later, substantial changes to the health care system are necessary. In times of economic dislocation like we are experiencing now, the human need for change in health care is especially acute and poignant. Unemployment is about more than data and statistics, it’s about neighbors and families in pain.

Nor am I raising this issue to gloat over the failure of ABX1-1. A number of the reforms contained in that legislation would have significantly improved California’s health care system.

These statistics, however, point to several truths:

1. Predicting the future is hard, if not impossible. Any reform package has to make assumptions about the economic environment years from now. And most likely, those estimates will be wrong.
2. Meaningful health care reform must come from the federal government — state’s simply aren’t equipped to deal with it. This isn’t to say there aren’t good ideas emerging from the states. But they lack the tools needed to deal with unexpected problems. As California has ably demonstrated, states do a poor job of facing economic challenges. They can’t deficit spend. The federal government has a tough time influencing the economy; states simply can’t.

Think about the budget drama of the past eight months. Now think about a health care structure upon which the state’s residents depends being subject to this horrendous display of chaos. It’s more than scary. It’s a nightmare that eventually California — or any state — will likely face if it tries to tackle the complex issues of comprehensive health care reform aimed at achieving anything close to universal coverage. Until states can print money, they will be incapable of shepherding their health systems through economic times like these.

America’s economy will recover. It’s only a matter of time and hard work. The nation’s health care system can be reformed into a truly American-style system that achieves universal — or nearly universal — coverage. It’s also a matter of time, hard work as well as of smart politics able to find common ground among competing factions. It won’t be easy, but it can be done.

No one during the debate over ABX1-1 could have anticipated what’s happened to the economy. The LAO warned against the potential, but even they did not declare this situation likely. Yet here we are. If ABX1-1 had passed the California fiscal crisis would be even worse than it is. And the state’s lawmakers would have been unable to face the challenge.

Quarter of Legislature Missed California’s Year of Health Care Reform

One day the politicans in Sacramento may pass a budget. Once (if?) that happens, lawmakers will turn their attention to, well, making laws. And some of those laws will impact health care coverage in California.

A lot of progress was made during the Year of Health Care Reform (2007 and a bit of 2008). The debate was intense and comprehensive reform nearly passed. It was approved by the State Assembly and supported by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but defeated in the State Senate. The new debate is likely to start somewhere near where the last one ended.

For many legislators, however, the health care debate will be somewhat a matter of first impression. Of the 11 new Senators, all previously served in the Assembly. And of the 28 new Assembly Members, two have previously served in the Senate. However, four of the new Senators and one of the freshman AssemblyMembers were out of office during at least since 2006. So they missed all the educational opportunities the Year of Health Care Reform offered.

Needless to say there’s a lot of interested parties seeking to bring them up to speed. And California isn’t the only state where newbie lawmakers need to figure out how the current health care system works before they start in on messing with it. One resource they’ll have is the 2009 State Legislators’ Guide to Health Insurance Solutions and Glossary published by the Council for Affordable Health Insurance and the American Legislative Exchange Council. (My thanks to agent Bruce Jugan for bringing this Guide to my attention). CAHI is an insurance industry group so, guess what? Yep, it’s got a spin to it. Meaning few wil agree with everything it says (I don’t).

Nonetheless it’s an interesting overview of health care reform issues at a very high level. The Guide is not state specific, so it won’t fill in the gaps for legislators looking for a refresher course on California’s recent debate, but that lack of specificity is also a plus. The high-level perspective provides a good foundation for understanding the broad outlines of the issue. And the glossary is very handy.

If anyone out there knows of similar guides, but from other perspectives, please send them my way. Understanding the upcoming health care reform debate requires an understanding of how lawmakers think about the issue. And to understand that it can’t hurt to read what they are reading. Or at least, what they should be reading.

The Need to Do Something — But SB 1440 Isn’t It

We elect politicians to solve problems. That’s their job. It’s what we pay them for. No one campaigns for office proclaiming their intent to accomplish nothing. There’s always some injustice to right. There’s always a mess to fix. So no one should be surprised that current lawmakers in Sacramento are desperate to do something about California’s health care system. After all, there are real problems in the current system.

But there’s a difference between lawmakers really addressing problems and simply looking like their addressing problems. Take Senate Bill 1440 authored by Senator Shiela Keuhl. The bill would require carriers to spend 85 percent of the premium they take in on medical care. As originally introduced, SB 1440 would have had a devastating impact on the individual health insurance market. It would have increased costs, decreased competition and made it nearly impossible for independent agents to assist consumers in finding the right plan for their needs.

Fortunately, SB 1440 has been substantially amended since its original introduction. As it reads today, the biggest problem with the bill is it requires carriers to segregate their Department of Managed Care regulated plans from those regulated by the Department of Insurance. While it’s not surprising regulators and legislators perceive these plans to be worthy of distinction, from a consumer’s point of view it’s a meaningless difference. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senator Keuhl should address this issue in their negotiations concerning the legislation. But that’s not the overriding problem with SB 1440.

What’s wrong with SB 1440 is that it won’t lower premiums, which is the stated purpose of the bill. The Rand Corporation in a report by Neeraj Sood and Eric Sun titled “Health Insurance Premiums in California: The Role of Administrative Cost and Profits” examined the results of similar legislation in other states. They found states with no Medical Loss Ration legislation spend statistically the same percentage of premium as those that regulated the entire market (83 percent and 84 percent, respectively). While it’s true that states limiting the loss ratio of all coverage (individual, small group and large group) set targets at levels lower than the 85 percent called for by SB 1440, the report suggests consumers are unlikely to benefit from any premium savings.

The reason is that profits and administrative costs aren’t the problem with skyrocketing health care costs; it’s the price of medical treatment that drives premiums. The study found that 85 percent of the increase in revenue per enrollee between 2002 and 2006 was the result of medical costs.

Lawmakers could address 85 percent of the problem. But that’s hard work. It requires examining the drivers of increased medical costs and making tough decisions on how to reduce their rate of increase. It’s far easier (if less impactful) to go after health insurance companies and HMOs. Never mind that, as reported by the Rand study, the profits of California HMOs are less than the profitability of the companies comprising the S&P 500. The reality is that, along with oil and tobacco companies, they are about as easy a political target as exists.

So lawmakers will pass SB 1440 and declare a blow against rising insurance premiums. They may not be able to pass a budget, but they can teach those insurance companies a lesson. The fact that the legislation won’t have much, if any, impact on premiums is irrelevant. The fact that it won’t bring medical inflation down to general inflation levels doesn’t matter.

Because while we pay them for results, we have a tendency to elect lawmakers based on appearances. Which means the underlying problem remains.

Individual Coverage an Endangered Species?

I know I said I wouldn’t be posting anything for awhile, but recent articles could be indications that private market individual medical insurance could be a candidate for the endangered species list. Which is a shame because individual coverage offers consumers some major advantages over the alternative. Fortunately, some of the threats to the future of this market may hold the seeds of a brighter future.

Take for instance, the intent of Congressman Henry Waxman, Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that “the individual market demanded more scrutiny, especially of cancellation practices,” as reported by Lisa Girion in the Los Angeles Times. The fact is, the way carriers handled their rescission powers have hurt innocent members, undermined their own credibility and battered whatever good will they might have possessed.

What’s ironic is that carriers rarely invoke their rescission rights. Consequently, whatever carriers gained in using it to fight fraud has been more than offset by the political damage they’ve taken.

Which brings us to Congressman Waxman’s hearings. Congressman Waxman is one of the House’s brightest members. He is passionate and committed to fighting injustice. His hearing will be thorough and, considering the political context of these things, fair. All sides will be heard and, with luck, some good might come of it. But it certainly will be a grilling causing strong insurance executives to sweat and bring weak ones to the verge of nervous breakdowns. Taking the oath before the Committee is not anything a CEO looks forward to: just ask all those former tobacco CEOs Congressman Waxman humbled a few years ago.

The real danger, however, is not the reputations of a few CEOs, but what “reforms” might emerge from the hearings. A lot of people simply don’t like individual coverage. They believe the carriers have too great an advantage in the transaction. To them, baring a government takeover of the health insurance system, the only other option is having the government micro manage the market.

Yet government micromanagement will inevitably lead a blander market of vanilla coverage and reduced choice. That’s what’s happened when states have intervened to create purchasing pools for consumers. While the pools have generally failed to lower the the cost of coverage, they have succeeded in limiting consumer choice.

Yet it’s the flexibility of the individual market that is one of its greatest strengths (along with its availability being independent of one’s job). Choice in the individual market makes it easier to find a solution for consumers’ unique needs. And those needs do differ. Ask a 22 year old fresh out-of-college and a recently retired 60 year old what they need from their health insurance. It will quickly become clear health insurance is not a product where one size fits all.

Increased flexibility brings the potential to lower costs, making coverage more accessible for more consumers. In short, there’s a lot of benefits to the individual market. It would be a shame if mistakes carriers made involving recessions results in over regulating the market. That’s could happen soon in California. Along with several rescission bills, legislation to regulate the kind of plan designs carriers can offer is moving forward. SB 1522, authored by incoming President Pro Tem Senator Darrell Steinberg is currently on the Assembly Appropriation Committee’s Suspense File. Which means it’s ready to be passed if the Legislature ever resolves the budget impasse.

I’ve written previously about problems with the bill’s specifics. Beyond those, the legislation also is symbolic of lawmakers’ desire and willingness to insert themselves into the market at a very granular level. It’s not a long leap from defining what policies must be offered to regulating their price, distribution and implementation.

So where’s the silver lining in all this? Individual coverage rules and regulations vary widely from state-to-state. This means consumer protections vary widely across state boundaries. It also reduces competition in some states. Senator John McCain and others propose to address this by allowing policies approved in one state to be sold in any state. This approach, however, would result in a disastrous dash by carriers to file their products in the states with the most lenient rules and the laxest enforcement.

Congressman Waxman’s hearings, however, could lead to a different solution: national standards establishing a credible structure to enable policies to be sold nationally. These structure would, ideally, bring increased credibility to the individual market without diminishing consumer choice.

OK, it’s a long shot. And it may only replace the spectre of over-regulation by state lawmakers with the danger of over-regulation by federal lawmakers.

But, hey, I only claimed it was the lining. But sometimes that’s all endangered species can hope for.

Reinventing the Individual Health Insurance Market

The health insurance industry has been under attack for years. There are those who would like to do away with it completely. While those voices have grown louder in recent years their political success has been limited at best. For evidence, just look at the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination: no major candidate called for a government-run, single-payer system. The two remaining contenders have both explicitly taken such an approach off the table.

Yet there is one aspect of the industry that is under intense attack: the individual market. Again, this isn’t new. In the past, however, most of the attacks have been unfocused or ill-informed. Critics tended to ignore unique aspects of the coverage targeted at individuals and families buying insurance outside of work: it’s a voluntary decision. To maintain affordable premiums carriers must weed out potential buyers who are certain to incur substantial claims.

For example, carriers will often reject an applicant who is a regular user of a particular prescription drug. This strikes many as wrong, if not immoral. Just because someone needs a certain medication is no reason to deny them insurance.

Yet, when the monthly prescription costs exceeds the monthly premium, what else can the carrier do? Insurance is about spreading risk. In a voluntary market where people can choose when to purchase coverage, it means they need to buy insurance before their known risks exceeds the premium. Otherwise, they are simply asking other consumers to subsidize them. This dynamic, known as adverse selection, is at the root of much of the problems facing the individual market.

It’s not the only cause, however. Carriers exacerbated the problem by mishandling their approach to managing adverse selection. The most obvious mistakes involved how rescissions were handled. Even the industry’s most ardent foes admit carriers need to protect themselves from fraud. If an applicant knowingly and intentionally lies about material information on an application for coverage, the carrier should have the right to revoke the coverage.

It’s identifying when the misstatements are knowingly and intentionally that creates a gray area. Carriers chose to be aggressive in applying their right to rescind coverage. Now they’re paying a huge cost for this posture in the form of large fines, law suits and horrendous publicity.

The rescission issue is the hammer being used by lawmakers, regulators and pundits interested in reshaping the individual health insurance market. That their proposals would be more likely to do more harm (in the form of higher prices and less consumer choice) than good seems almost beside the point. They want change. They want it now.

While their changes are often off target their goal may not be. Perhaps the attack on the this market segment is what’s needed to prod the industry to reform itself. Perhaps it’s the motivation needed to reinvent the individual health insurance market, to make it stronger, more valuable and more respected than in the past.

I’ll be writing about the opportunities for reinvigorating the individual market over the next several days. I hope you’ll share your ideas, too. Please post your thoughts on ways to reinvent individual health insurance products, the way they’re sold, administered and used. By the end of this dialogue we’ll at the very least have built a list of alternatives to some of the misguided proposals currently being considered in Sacramento, Washington D.C. and elsewhere. At best, someone who can actually implement the changes may be inspired by your thoughts and meaningful change will follow.

Stay tuned.  

Debating Medical Cost Controls in Massachusetts

The folks in Massachusetts are engaged in a lively debate over health care reform. Seems their widely touted reform plan, complete with Connector and individual mandate, is running into some unintended consequences. Among them, higher costs than anticipated and a lack of primary care physicians. The good news is the wide-ranging debate has moved beyond the politics and mechanics of the Massachusetts health plan to encompass controlling health care costs.

Consider the dialogue occurring on the Commonhealth blog (published by 90.9 WBUR, Boston’s NPR station), between Dr. David Himmelstein, Co-Founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, and Eric Shultz, President of Fallon Community Health Plan. Dr. Himmelstein kicked things off with a post claiming “With spiraling costs threatening to derail Massachusetts’ health reform, politicians and health policy wonks are rounding up the usual cost-control suspects. Unfortunately, the tired ideas they’re trotting out have virtually no chance of success.”

Dr. Himmelstein then runs through why computerization, prevention, disease management, and cost sharing won’t restrain medical costs. He believes the only way to reduce costs is to eliminate the “middle men” in the system — what you and I call the insurance industry – and to limit the profusion of expensive high technology facilities. Leaving aside a moment the public policy of a government-run system, Dr. Himmelstein fails to explain how eliminating insurance companies, insurance agents and purchasing pools curtails the rate of medical cost increase. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Eliminating private bureaucracies and delivery systems simply shifts is a one-shot savings, not a long term solution — and that doesn’t include the offset created by the need to create a government bureaucracy and delivery system in its place.

Dr. Himmelstein’s call for fewer CAT scanners and other technologies might be more substantive, although his approach to controlling them is chilling. “So long as we leave health planning to the market, the expensive medical arms race will continue.” The implication being that only the government can control costs. Dr. Himmelstein fails to provide any examples where that has worked. I wonder why?

In any event, Mr. Shultz responded in a post with a warning that “Discussions about who pays — whether it’s a single-payer or otherwise — are, fundamentally, discussions about cost-shifting. But cost-shifting does little to get at the relentless underlying drivers of health care costs. And what’s driving up health insurance costs are skyrocketing medical costs, which consume roughly 87 cents of every health insurance dollar.” While allowing that Dr. Himmelstein’s identifying the need for limits on expensive high tech facilities is “well taken,” Mr. Shultz rejects the single payer approach. Citing a Rand study, he notes that ”only half of all health care dollars are spent on appropriate medical care.” 

This reality can only be addressed, according to Mr. Shultz, by first requiring that “all players within the health care system have quality and cost information, combined with innovative health insurance plans.” Mr. Shultz goes on to refute Dr. Himmelstein’s dismissal of disease management and smoking cessation programs as ineffective, instead calling for continued focus on prevention and disease management efforts “to ensure the most optimal results are achieved.”

There’s more to the Fallon post. The reality is that controlling medical care costs is a far from easy task. It requires saying “no” to patients demanding inappropriate or ineffective care, “no” to facilities and other providers seeking a market advantage by deploying the latest technologies, “no” to health plans who are less than clear on what’s covered — and what’s not — in their plan designs, and a whole lot more.

What’s significant is that the struggles facing Massachusetts’ health care reform plan is sparking a fulsome debate on what’s needed to restrain health care costs. That may be an unanticipated outcome of the reform effort, but it’s useful and welcome nonetheless.

Why Health Care Reform is So Complicated

As Senator Barack Obama puts it when talking about health care reform, “If it was easy, we’d have done it by now.” For proof of how complex things can be, take a look at Massachusetts. Insurance agent Bruce Benton passed along a New York Times article describing the challenges some patients in the state face in finding a family physician.

Massachusetts’ health care reform plan strives for universal coverage. Since being implemented last year, about 340,000 of the 600,000 uninsured in the state have gained coverage. The strain on the state’s budget was widely anticipated. Of the newly insured, 176,000 have government-subsidized coverage and another 55,000 have enrolled in Medicaid according to The Boston Globe. The strain on the state’s budget is serious. But again, these kind of cost problems were predictable and aren’t really surprising.

What was apparently overlooked was how the influx of newly insureds into the system is straining the pressure on family doctors and other primary care physicians. As a result there’s waiting lists for some non-emergency treatment that stretches for months in some communities. The Times article recounts one physician in Amherst that is now scheduling physicals for early May — of 2009.

The problem is a serious one. By coming into the system, through subsidized coverage or not, residents of Massachusetts anticipated having access to basic health care services. Yet there’s just not enough primary care physicians to go around.

The United States will need 40 percent more primary care doctors by 2020, according to the American College of Physicians, to accommodate the aging population. It’s hard to see where they’re going to come from. The reasons are many. As the Times story reports, factors include reimbursement rates by Medicaid, and the attraction of a specialist’s practice among them. What’s ironic is that Massachusetts ranks significantly above the average in the per capita number of all doctors and primary care physicians.

Which does one little good if you need a doctor and can’t get one to see you. And none of this means attempts to achieve universal coverage should stop. It just underscores how tough a challenge it will be to make any reform package work.