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You are here: Home / Archives for Healthcare / Vouchercare

Vouchercare

My name, it is Mulvaney, and I’m known quite famously

by DougJ|  April 12, 20173:15 pm| 154 Comments

This post is in: Vouchercare, I wish a motherfucker would!

There’s now way this would pass the Senate, so, yeah, I wish a motherfucker would vote for VoucherCare in the House:

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney—previously a House GOPer known for being a budget hawk—kept the door open for President Donald Trump approving of some kind of overhaul of Medicare or Social Security.

Referencing the proposal oft-floated by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) to privatize Medicare by transforming it into what’s known as “premium support,” Mulvaney told CNBC’s John Harwood that his “guess is the House will do either that or something similar to that.”

Harwood brought up Trump’s campaign pledge not to touch Medicare and asked whether he would veto it.

“That’s not a really conducive way to sort of maintain a relationship between the executive and the administrative branch,” Mulvaney said. “Let them pass that and let’s talk about it.”

I realize they’ve passed stuff like through the House before without getting hammered, but if they think they can do it now, with a Republican president who might sign the thing, they’re in for a big fucking surprise.

My name, it is Mulvaney, and I’m known quite famouslyPost + Comments (154)

What does Chuck Schumer look like?

by DougJ|  November 25, 20163:10 pm| 178 Comments

This post is in: Vouchercare

Say Medicare privatization again, I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker:

“The Republicans’ ideological and visceral hatred of government could deny millions of senior citizens across the country the care they need and deserve,” Schumer said in the statement. “To our Republican colleagues considering this path, Democrats say: make our day. Your effort will fail, and this attack on our seniors will not stand.”

I don’t care how many fucking Russian twitter bots they send out there to talk up the glories of vouchercare, this aggression will not stand.

What does Chuck Schumer look like?Post + Comments (178)

Round one

by DougJ|  November 16, 201612:51 pm| 254 Comments

This post is in: Vouchercare, Our Failed Political Establishment

The first big battle of the Trump administration is going to be over Ryan’s plan to replace Medicare with vouchers. We’ve got to win this battle. Remember, Bush losing the battle to privatize Social Security was the beginning of the end for him. I’m calling my Congress people about this later today. Josh Marshall says Dems don’t have a plan yet:

Over recent days, as I’ve spoken to people in the world who might lead the fight against Paul Ryan’s plan to phaseout Medicare and replace it with private insurance vouchers and one message is quite clear: No one is paying attention. No one is ready. No one has a plan. Half the people are still too shell-shocked to think about anything. The other half are telling themselves something so crazy can’t happen. But wait, at least one person on TV is starting to talk about this.

Round onePost + Comments (254)

More on Kentucky

by David Anderson|  November 4, 20157:01 am| 38 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, Vouchercare

Via Tbogg:

 

Basically Bevin wants the other states to take care of his poor people. Must be a states rights thing: pic.twitter.com/j6IAAV3EsY

— TBogg (@tbogg) November 4, 2015

The 1115 waiver is how Montana, Alaska, Iowa, Arkansas and half a dozen other states have expanded Medicaid.  If straight up Medicaid expansion is replaced with a 1115 waiver Medicaid expansion in Kentucky, then most of the 420,000 people who are on expanded Medicaid in Kentucky will still have coverage although it has been worse coverage.

The 1115 waivers that have been approved have set some strict limits:

  • No more than 2% of income can be spent on premiums and only if people make more than 100% of the Federal Poverty Line
  • Cost sharing can be maxed out at 5% of income
  • Redetermination of eligibility can happen annually instead of every six months
  • Health Savings Accounts are approved with state seed money
  • Medicaid is not tied to job or educational efforts.

I don’t think Kentucky would go Arkansas model of paying for private insurance.  Arkansas is seeing that this route is extremely expensive.  So far it has not mattered for Arkansas as the Federal government has been paying 100% of the cost to expand Medicaid without calling it Medicaid Expansion or Obamacare.  That changes on 1/1/17 as the states will have to start kicking money in.  The Arkansas model will cost the state an incremental $15 to $20 million dollars per year over straight up Medicaid expansion.

If we assume the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services follows their precedent, a probable Kentucky 1115 waiver will impose some premiums or mandatory HSA contributions, some non-ambulatory transportation services will be cut and cost sharing for emergency room visits will increase.  The premiums will push some people out of the program.  Everyone else will have another hoop to jump through but they’ll still have coverage.

I thought this was a 10% probability last night, but with new information I’m bumping this up to a 60% probable outcome.

More on KentuckyPost + Comments (38)

Enough to Choke an Everglades Python…

by Betty Cracker|  May 8, 20159:12 pm| 60 Comments

This post is in: Austerity Bombing, Fuck The Poor, Vouchercare, Assholes, Teabagger Stupidity

I suspect our healthcare reform correspondent, Richard Mayhew, will cover this in more detail at some point, so I’ll keep it short:

Florida’s sleazy, serpent-like governor, Rick Scott, slithered up to DC this week to try to locate a fat wad of cash he could ingest to reimburse Florida hospitals for providing indigent care. 

He had to do it while still eschewing Medicaid expansion (Obamacare!), thus enabling Scott to get money from the Feds while saving face with the teaturds back home.

Mind you, Scott’s strategy is not the fiscally responsible move — the Obama admin peeps rightly pointed out that it’s more cost efficient (not to mention more HUMANE) to give people coverage and nip developing health problems in the bud rather than pay for a medical crisis in the ER. 

But bootstraps, welfare queens in Cadillacs and strapping young bucks buying t-bones, etc. So no.

Anyway, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell told Scott to fuck off. Basically, she said, “Swallow Obamacare, or depart, foul serpent! “

Well done, Madam Secretary!

Did I say I’d “keep it short?” Ha! Another lie! But that’s a perfect illustration of why morons and liars win healthcare reform debates. It takes too many words to explain. I’m out of them. Words, that is. The end.

Enough to Choke an Everglades Python…Post + Comments (60)

Problems with high deductible health plans

by David Anderson|  January 30, 20148:41 am| 25 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, Vouchercare

From a loyal reader, I was pointed to this story down in Georgia concerning state employees getting a slightly better health insurance plan mid-year.  I want to highlight the problem with the original health plan.

This year has brought on an onslaught of changes, which included one form of insurance from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia – a high-deductible HRA (Health Reimbursement Arrangement) – and no additional selections to choose from. It is no secret that an HRA is not a one-size-fits-all medical plan for every family, particularly individuals with long-term illnesses….In late December, our family was notified that our daughter’s occupational therapy would increase from a $25 co-pay to $127 per one hour session. We are facing $1,000 per month in medical bills between insurance premiums and four hours of therapy….

Health reimbursement arrangements/health savings accounts/high deductible health plans are designed to do one basic thing.  That thing is to shift costs onto the individual for anything that could vaguely look like a “day-to-day” expense.  The theory of change is that the individual will be much more price sensitive and thus a much better price shopper as well as being much more not consume any medical service in a marginal situation.  From here, costs will stabilize and eventually decline.  That is the theory of change.

It is a theory of change that is built on the Rand Insurance Experiment.  The Rand Insurance Experiment showed that making people pay out of pocket reduced health care consumption and expenditure.  However the Rand Insurance Experiment also showed that people are not perfectly rational, infinitely discounting, amazingly discerning health care shoppers; people are human with the limitations of bounded rationality that is shaped by information processing costs and competing priorities.  People being people instead of perfectly rationalizing agents means high deductible cost sharing plan designs don’t guarantee that people get the care that they actually need which leads to worse health outcomes including death in some cases.

High deductible plans are appropriate choices for some people.  They are not appropriate for everyone if we value appropriate as a means of providing effective, efficient care that meets the medical needs of an individual without bankrupting them or their family. 

If I was the health insurance dictator in this country, I would allow high deductible plans to be sold.  They would only be sold to individuals and families who are reasonably young (age is a pre-exisiting condition) without any signifcant claims history.  The policies would not be automatically renewed until the most recent claims and medical history was reviewed.  Furthermore, the potential buyer pool would be limited to people who have the ability to absorb a one-time shock of several thousand dollars without it being a crisis.  This sub-population is fairly small, and can absorb the risk shifting that is inherent in a high deductible plan design.  Anyone with chronic conditions or recurring health maitenance problems should not be a plan designed like this if the goal is to effectively manage health.

Problems with high deductible health plansPost + Comments (25)

Same old Song and Dance

by David Anderson|  September 19, 20138:40 am| 42 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, Free Markets Solve Everything, Fuck The Middle-Class, Fuck The Poor, Vouchercare, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Assholes

The House Republican Study Committee is offering a “repeal and replace” plan for Obamacare. If we assume that this is purely a marketing document aimed to fulfill the check box that there is a “plan” to “replace” Obamacare that can get 218 votes in the House, then this document aces that evaluation. However, my therapist asked me to try not to be a cynical bastard before my first cup of coffee every morning, so lets evaluate this plan on the following criteria:

  • Provides coverage for people with pre-exisiting conditions
  • Provides coverage for people who aren’t part of the Republican donor class
  • Attempts to bend the cost curve down
  • Covers neccessary medical processes

Before we evaluate, let’s go over the major policy planks.

  1. Repeal all of Obamacare including Medicaid expansion and the three legged stool of subsidies, community rating/guaranteed issue, and mandate.
  2. Give people a tax deduction of $7,500 for an individual and $20,000 for families
  3. Significant expansion of HSA tax advantages.
  4. $25 billion for state run high risk pools with premium support for any premiums that are over twice the state average for insurance.
  5. Coverage guarantee for pre-exisiting conditions only applies to people who maintain continuous coverage
  6. Allow insurance companies to sell a single product through a single state regulatory filing
  7. Allow small groups to pool together for better risk pool pricing.
  8. Improve pricing transparency
  9. Stop comparative effectiveness research
  10. Tort reform to cap damage limits
  11. Random anti-abortion plank

 The short version is MASSIVE FAIL

The long version is below the fold:

show full post on front page

 The big “idea” behind the “policy” document is that tax breaks solve all problems.  The tax break is aimed at decoupling insurance from employment.  However, as we all know, deductions give more money back to people who have higher incomes.  Someone in the 25% bracket will see a $1,875 refund on the $7,500 deduction while someone earning $16,000 (or just slightly above 138% of poverty line for an individual) will see either $750 back (10% bracket) or less if there were any other deductions they were taking.  So the tax break idea gives more help to those who don’t need it. 

Right now for Obamacare, there is a significant debate on whether or not an individual with an income of $16,000 is able or willing to pay $600 a year for health insurance after they receive a $4,000 or $5,000 subsidy.  The House GOP inverts the dynamic and gives a $750 subsidy for a several thousand dollar a year policy (if it covers anything at all). 

Moving down the income ladder and working up in family size, a $20,000 deduction to buy health insurance does not help a family that has less than $20,000 income, and it is a cruel joke to a family of four with an income of $40,000.  And as a kicker, if this policy did go into play, we can expect to hear about the 57% and all of those lucky duckies who weren’t part of the 47%  for years to come.  Now if a family is making $250,000 a year, this ain’t a bad policy set.  But that is to be expected.

HSAs are going to be a part of the health care and health payment environment for a while.  If we had a functional political system that has working factional blocks interested in give and take, HSA treatment could be a point of reasonable negoatiation.  We don’t have that, we have a quasi veto controlling faction that likes to eat anthrax laced tired rims.

As a policy note, HSA tax treatment against massively favors the well-off on both the tax advantages and the fact that they have the money to put into these accounts to begin with while the middle class and poor can’t come up with $5,000 or more in cash in a single year to cover a catastrophic event, much less an annual several thousand dollar lump to cover expensive chronic care (unless you’re in Colorado).  Furthermore, there has been significant research that has shown tax incentived savings don’t materially impact the total value of savings, it just redistributes savings to the favored uses.  As it is, we as a society have too much of our personal savings tied up in illiquid assets such as houses and 401(k)s, so having another dedicated use savings vehicle is probably a bad idea.

High risk pools have been a conservative hobby horse.  The idea to to pay for the care of people who no insurance company wants to touch.  The problem is that insurance companies won’t insure these people because they are guaranteed money losers because they have known and expensive care requirements.  Obamacare gets these people into the risk pool by the community rating requirement and distributes the risk via the mandate.  This policy proposal shunts them to the side.  The policy failure is that these people will cost way more than $25 billion dollars over 10 years to serve.  And since the high risk pool often contains individuals who are more likely to either not be able to work, or can only work at low wage jobs, they don’t have the resources to pay double state average premiums before they can get any federal assistance.  Again, this is a good deal for someone with means.

Continuous coverage in the private market only matters when there is no three legged stool with guaranteed issue.  This allows people with pre-exisiting conditions to get insurance coverage if they have always had private market insurance coverage.  If someone is employed at a place without health benefits, they are SOL as the individual market won’t insure them under this proposal.  Again, if someone is pulling in 150K a year no big deal because the odds that they work at a job without health benefits is minimal, but someone make 20K a year is SOL.

Selling insurance across state lines already happens. Cigna, Aetna, Wellspan and several other major players have operations in at least half the states in the country.  Right now they have to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the individual state that they are selling in that they have a sufficient network and product offering.  The House Republican plan introduces the credit card and corporate law model of “regulation.”  A plan approved in one state can be sold in all fifty.   Some small state that is easily bought out like South Dakota or Delaware will under this scenario pass a set of insurance regulations that makes it extraordinarily easy for insurance companies to collect premiums without having to pay claims. 

Furthermore several states have passed laws that allow for state residents to buy out of state approved insurance.  The program evalution on these policies have shown massive fail:

 The two states that have implemented across state lines laws, Georgia and Wyoming, reported similar challenges. No out-of-state insurers have entered either of these markets or indicated their intent to do so as a result of the states’ across state lines legislation. Maine officials reported that no out-of-state insurers have yet indicated their intent to enter…

As a side note, I don’t have a problem with a state deciding to either form interstate compacts with other states with similar regulatory priorities or opening up their entire insurance market to national race to the bottom regulation.  States are allowed and should experiment, I oppose national race to the bottom standards.  Massachusetts does not want to be Mississippi’s bitch.

Allowing small groups to pool together is already happening.  That is called the “SHOP” experience on the Exchange.  This is not a bad idea, it is just reinventing the fucking wheel when the pre-exisiting wheel is almost ready to roll.

Improving price transparency again is something that in a rational political environment should be a fairly easy policy to hammer out as theoretically all veto players should be interested in roughly the same agreement region. 

Stopping comparative effectiveness research is a great way to waste money.  We should only pay for treatments and interventions that work.  CER is an attempt to figure out what actually works.  This is a throw-away policy to assuage the Rascal Riders that there are no death panels and it is amazingly stupid.

Tort avoidance and damage limitation policies are designed to fuck over a Democratic donor group and reward Republican donor groups.  It is a rent distribution system to favor certain groups.  Furthermore, Texas has enacted tort “reform” and it has had no impact on the rate of cost growth or doctor retention in Texas. 

The researchers said their study suggests that Medicare payments to doctors in Texas rose 1 to 2 percent faster than the rest of the country, Black said.

Since tort reform, some Texas residents have complained that they cannot find a lawyer to pursue a malpractice case because of the $750,000 cap on payouts for pain, suffering, disfigurement and mental anguish. The limit often makes litigation cost prohibitive…

Texas saw the number of direct patient care doctors grow more slowly after tort reform than it did before, the study says. Afterward, Texas did slightly worse than other states in attracting doctors, the study says….

And the random anti-abortion plank is in the policy proposal because the policy proposal was released on a day that ended with “Y”.

Same old Song and DancePost + Comments (42)

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