Tag: GOP

Republicans Run from Voucher Label

Dec 1, 2018

By Merrill Goozner

What’s in a name? Everything, it would appear, when it comes to describing Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare, which the Republican-controlled House of Representatives backed in its budget resolution late last month. The plan would subsidize seniors’ purchase of private insurance plans instead of enrolling in traditional government-financed Medicare, although that would be preserved as an option. The government would finance a portion of the purchase.

Architects of the plan call it “premium support.” Opponents call it a voucher, which they say will over time lag behind medical inflation and force seniors to pay an ever-growing share of their health care bills.

Ten Republicans joined every Democrat in voting against the resolution, which passed 228-191. The Republican apostates abandoned their majority colleagues largely because they were afraid of being tarred with the voucher label during this fall’s re-election campaign.

And it was that label that Republicans on the House Ways and Means health subcommittee repeatedly attacked during Friday’s hearing on the Republican plan, which has not yet been introduced as legislation. Its details have not yet been scrutinized by health care experts or, more significantly, the Congressional Budget Office. “Premium support is not a voucher,” Ryan, R-Wis., said at the hearing.

Repeal and Replace. Repeal and Replace. Repeal …

Jul 9, 2017• 5

By BRIAN JOONDEPH, MD

Repeal and replace. Simple enough on the campaign trail. We heard this promise in 2010, when voters gave the House to Republicans. We heard it again in 2012, when voters gave them the Senate. Despite controlling Congress, Obamacare remained the law of the land. Candidate Donald Trump, along with most Republican members of Congress, promised repeal and replace last year.

Republicans now have their largest electoral majority in nearly a century, and repeal and replace is spinning its wheels, like an old Pontiac stuck in the snow.

Some think a grand bill is still possible, particularly Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. Others are skeptical. Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee favor a two-pronged approach: repeal first then repeal later. Herein lies the problem. Republicans can’t agree on anything.

Democrats had no such problem in 2010 when they passed Obamacare. The Bernie coalition didn’t get a single-payer plan as they wanted. Some wanted higher Medicaid reimbursement for their states, as in the “Cornhusker Kickback.” But they came together and passed Obamacare, each Democrat getting most but not all of what he wanted.

King v. Burwell: Will the Supreme Court Save the Republican Party from Itself?

Mar 12, 2015• 103

By GARY L. KAPLAN

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the most recent and pernicious attack on the Affordable Care Act – aka Obamacare. In the absence of a dysfunctional Congress, the case would be beneath the dignity of Court: it addresses no complicated legal issues that might guide future decisions of lower courts. Instead, the Supreme Court has been asked to decide whether a drafting error resulting in one unfortunate phrase in the much maligned 2000 page law –“Exchange established by the States” — means that more than 6.3 million citizens would not be eligible for federalsubsidies allowing them to afford commercial (i.e. – non-governmental) health insurance.

Ordinarily, Congress is expected to fix such drafting problems itself. Each year Congress pass dozens of “Technical Corrections” bills to fix such errors in prior legislation. These bills are akin to software patches that are regularly released by companies to fix unanticipated “bugs” previously release programs. But this is no ordinary legislation. Having spent six years vilifying for President Obama and has supporters for passing legislation that improves American lives it is far too late in the day for the Republican Congress to replace demagoguery with common sense.

So this issue is now in the lap of the Supreme Court, with its well-known partisan divide of four liberals, four arch-conservatives, and Justice Kennedy, who as the “swing vote” effectively decides many of the most divisive cases himself. The Court can decide to gloss over this drafting error, as proposed by the Obama Administration, or apply its language to devastating effect. Prior Supreme Court cases—i.e. “precedent” in the jargon of the law—can be found to support either position. In the end, there have been few cases in which the Court has more judicial freedom – assuming precedent ever really binds the Court – to do whatever it wants in keeping with the Justices own political biases.Continue reading…

With November Elections Six Months Away Obamacare Is Up for Grabs

May 14, 2014• 3

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI

House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans seemed surprised last week when representatives of the insurance industry reported that they didn’t have enough data yet to forecast prices for next year’s health insurance exchanges, the market was not about to blow up, and that so far at least 80% of consumers have paid for the health insurance policies they purchased on the exchanges.

The executives also reported there are still serious back-end problems with HealthCare.gov––particularly in being able to reconcile the people the carriers think are covered and the people the government thinks are covered.

These are all things that you have read about a number of times on this blog.The insurance companies are doing their best to make Obamacare work.

Why?

Because if they want to be in the individual and small group markets, Obamacare is the only game in town––it has a monopoly over these markets. The same rules that apply to the individual market also apply to the even larger small group health insurance market.

Unless Obamacare is repealed this is the business reality insurance companies have to deal with. So, you make the best of it.

Republicans are right to think Obamacare is unpopular. The latest Real Clear Politics average of all major polls taken since open-enrollment closed still has 41% of those surveyed favorable to the law and 52% opposed to the law––about as bad it is always been.

But Obamacare is not going to be repealed. The sooner Republicans come to understand that the better for them.

I really think Democrats have the potential to take back, or at least neutralize, the health care issue by the November elections if Republicans aren’t careful.

Republicans Considering Proposing High-Risk Pools: Health Insurance Ghettos???

Mar 20, 2014• 2

By Robert Laszewski

We are hearing that Republicans are considering proposing high-risk pools as part of an alternative health insurance reform proposal to Obamacare.

A high-risk pool proposal would likely mean the Congress giving states the flexibility, and perhaps funding, to set up these risk pools. Risk pools by definition are a place where people can go when they are not able to buy health insurance in the regular market because they have a health problem.

That means Republicans would be turning the clock back to a time when insurance companies could turn people down for health insurance because of their health status.

Presumably, the Republicans are contemplating a market where insurance companies could once again choose just who they wanted to cover––the healthy but not the sick.

Anyone turned down could then go the high-risk pool to be assured of having health insurance. Presumably, Republicans would assure consumers that they would be able to access the same kind of comprehensive health insurance and at the same market rates as those able to buy from insurance companies would be able to get.

Let me be clear at this point that I don’t know of anyone in the insurance industry asking to go back to the days when a carrier could exclude people as a result of their health status and make money just covering the healthy.

Whether it’s Obamacare or a risk pool concept, policymakers are faced with the same dilemma: How do you insinuate the unhealthy and otherwise uninsurable into a health insurance system in a way that benefits are comprehensive and costs are affordable for everyone?

Don’t Be Fooled, Prospects for Long-Term SGR Fix Still Dim

Feb 9, 2014• 5

By Billy Wynne

In light of Thursday’s bicameral, bipartisan release of a Medicare physician payment policy to permanently replace the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula – an achievement to be celebrated in its own right – some are seeing momentum toward passage of such a deal before the current doc fix expires on March 31.

But the scope of what the committees issued Thursday represents as much of a step back as a step forward, at least relative to their aspirations and timeline for accomplishing them.

Once the appointment of Senator Baucus to be Ambassador to China was announced, the committees agreed to make it “as far as they could” toward a comprehensive SGR replacement policy prior to his confirmation, including identifying offsets to pay for the $125-150 billion (over 10 years) bill. For those who missed it, Senator Baucus was confirmed on Thursday.

Only in the past week did the key committees acknowledge that achieving agreement on offsets by this deadline was unattainable, but finalization of the so-called “extenders,” a hodge podge of Medicare payment plus-ups and other polices perennially included with the doc fix, was still the goal.

(Recall that the Senate Finance Committee passed an SGR replacement bill with extenders in December, but their House counterparts have yet to do so.)

In negotiations on that extenders element, House Republican leads reportedly would not agree to include beneficiary-oriented policies, such as funding for outreach to Medicare enrollees regarding low-income subsidy programs and for Family-to-Family Health Information Centers.

While some Democrats involved in the talks may have been inclined to make this concession, others sharply objected, scuttling a deal on this front and demonstrating the difficulty of compromise on this relatively non-controversial topic.

Furthermore, and has always been the assumption, identifying offsets for the package continues to be an exponentially heavier lift than any other aspect of the process. On that front, the key camps have outlined their broad parameters for what they might accept.

House Republican leads desire and likely require meaningful cuts to ACA-related spending as well as a substantial balance of Medicare beneficiary-impacting cuts, such as those relating to premiums and coinsurance.

The Republican Dilemma

Dec 15, 2013• 27

By ROGER COLLIER

What a difference a few weeks make. Just as Republicans were desperately trying to extricate themselves from the fiasco of tying budget passage and debt ceiling legislation to repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the White House came to their rescue with its disastrous healthcare.gov start-up.

It’s now looking like the most egregious healthcare.gov glitches will be fixed by year-end, but with enough problems remaining in 2014 to continue to provide fodder for conservative (and other) critics. Unfortunately for the administration, just as the technical bugs are ironed out the spotlight will move to other aspects of Obamacare.

Premiums are going to take a jump next year, reflecting the lower than projected enrollment by the young and healthy (thanks in part to the healthcare.gov fiasco and the confusion created by Presidential and Congressional attempts to allow non-compliant plans to be extended). There’s a good chance of wholesale cancellations, too, as some insurers take a long look at the unhealthy business they’ve acquired and decide to abandon the exchange market. And it’s almost a given that every other increase in premiums or cut in coverage or cancellation of insurance will be blamed on the upheaval of the Affordable Care Act.

It’s enough to make gleeful Republican leaders believe in the Tooth Fairy.

But will the Tooth Fairy continue to deliver, notably in the Congressional midterms in 2014 and the Presidential election in 2016? The public attention span is notoriously short, and while the current chaos may influence the 2014 midterms, by 2016 the healthcare.gov disaster is likely to be a fading memory. Barack Obama won’t be running for reelection, so harping on the present White House’s incompetence will have limited impact. And while the eventual imposition of IRS fines on those still without coverage will certainly generate a new round of outrage–even assuming the IRS gets the calculations right–Hilary Clinton, or whoever the Democratic candidate turns out to be, will reasonably be able to ask “So where was the Republicans’ better idea?”

GOP’s Oddest Obamacare Rejection: “Patient-Centered Healthcare”

Oct 27, 2013• 15

By Michael L. Millenson

The reason that Republicans shut down the federal government, it turns out, was to “restore patient-centered healthcare in America.”

Huh?

As the lead author of a policy paper entitled, “Will the Affordable Care Act Move Patient-Centeredness to Center Stage?” I admit to a certain guilty thrill when I read this precise demand coming as the climax of a letter sent by 80 hard-right representatives to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). You don’t get much more “center stage” than shutting off the federal money spigot, which is what the letter – discussed in a recent article in The New Yorker – threatened unless the ACA was defunded.

Having said that, patient-centeredness was a truly odd choice to occupy a central role in the conservative casus belli that ended up disrupting the entire U.S. economy until the right wing finally caved.

To begin with, the term is a minor piece of jargon likely to draw blank stares from pretty much the entire American public. Even for us health policy mavens, the GOP letter linking James Madison on the redress of grievances to defunding Obamacare to a “restoration” of patient-centeredness required major mental gymnastics.

Then there’s the unintentional linguistic irony. The term “patient-centered medicine” originated after World War II with a psychoanalyst who urged physicians to relate to patients as people with physical and psychological needs, not just a bundle of symptoms. “Patient-centered care” further defined itself as exploring “patients’ needs and concerns as patients themselves define them,” according to a book by the Picker/Commonwealth Program for Patient-Centered Care, which coined the term in 1987. Patient-centered care was adopted as a “goal” by the Institute of Medicine, which added its own definition, in 2001.

But here’s where the irony kicks in. Obamacare opponents assert that the ACA undermines the traditional doctor-patient relationship – although I suspect that being able to pay your doctor because you have health insurance actually improves it quite a bit.

Yet in calling for “patient-centered healthcare” instead of the more common “patient-centered care” or even patient-centered medicine, conservatives unwittingly abandoned doctor-patient language in favor of business-speak.

Round One of the Obamacare Exchange Hearings. Angry Republicans 6 Contractors 0.

Oct 24, 2013• 7

By Charles Ornstein

Today’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing/grilling of the contractors behind Healthcare.gov brought a lot of defenses and fingerpointing, but little clarity of when the website will be fixed.

Still, here are some of the more-memorable quotes. The sources are below each.

“I will not yield to this monkey court,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said when Republican lawmakers tried to talk about online privacy fears. -Politico

“This is not about blame. It’s about accountability,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R., Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “We still don’t know the real picture, as the administration appears allergic to transparency.” – WSJ.com

“CMS [the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] had the ultimate decision to go live or not go live,” said Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president of CGI Federal, the lead federal contractor on the project. “At CGI we were not in position to make that decision. We were there to support the client. It’s not our position to tell clients whether to go live or not go live.” — Washington Post

“Amazon and eBay don’t crash the week before Christmas,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, a Democrat. “ProFlowers doesn’t crash on Valentine’s Day.” – NBC News

“Three weeks after the Web site went live, we are still hearing reports of significant problems. These problems need to be fixed, and they need to be fixed fast,” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado. -New York Times

“We understand the frustration many people have felt since healthcare.gov was launched. We have been and remain accountable for the performance of our tools and our work product,” said Andrew Slavitt, the group executive vice president for Optum/QSSI, a contractor on the project. – ABC News

Meanwhile, HHS officials may be regretting their decision to give Healthcare.gov visitors the ability to post comments to the site. ProPublica reporters reviewed over 500 comments posted at https://www.healthcare.gov/connect/.

A sampling:

Wrongly Listed As Jailed

“Website said my wife and I were ineligible due to current incarceration. We have never been arrested in our lives, both 63!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,” Fred wrote on Oct. 21.

Health Problems Made Worse

“I have a pre-existing condition …. a-fib…..and actually had an attack after getting frustrated with this confusing mess,” Bill wrote on Oct. 22. (A-fib refers to atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heartbeat.)

Daughter is Not a Daughter Anymore

“I am having difficulty with my account,” Joanna wrote on Oct. 22. “It appears that my daughter was added twice so that I now have two daughters with the same name and social security number. I am unable to delete one of them. Also, the drop down menu that relates to what relationship someone is to another is faulty. I choose that my husband is the father of our daughter and that my daughter is a dependant [sic] to me and my husband. What it actually shows though is that my daughter is a stepdaughter to her father and that my daughter is now both my husband and I’s parent. “

I Oppose Obamacare. I Support the Affordable Care Act.

Oct 1, 2013• 21

By KENNY LIN, MD

Today, more than three years after being signed into law, and more than a year after surviving a Supreme Court challenge, the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, finally begins to fulfill its promise. Most of this country has long since taken sides, despite appalling gaps in popular understanding of what the law means, what it does, and what it doesn’t do.

Let me admit that I’ve never had particularly warm feelings toward President Obama. I think his foreign policy is a mess. The trillions in debt that the U.S. has run up over the past 5 years will hurt my generation and future generations, and if Republicans can be faulted for their fantasy that the federal budget can be balanced exclusively through spending cuts, Obama has sustained the Democratic fairy tale that raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” is all that is necessary to pay the skyrocketing bills.

On multiple occasions during my time in government, the President had no qualms about squashing science and scientists for political convenience. He is a perpetual campaigner, preferring theatrical gestures to the backstage grunt work of governing. And for all of his rhetorical gifts when preaching to the choir, he’s been one of the least effective persuaders-in-chief to have held the office.

And so, naturally, I oppose Obamacare. I oppose a government takeover of health care that includes morally repugnant death panels staffed by faceless bureaucrats who will decide whose grandparents live or die and make it impossible for clinicians to provide compassionate end-of-life care. I oppose the provision in Obamacare that says that in order for some of the 50 million uninsured Americans to obtain health insurance, an equal or greater number must forfeit their existing plans or be laid off from their jobs.

I oppose the discarding of personal responsibility for one’s health in Obamacare. I oppose Obamacare’s expansion of the nanny-state that will regulate the most private aspects of people’s lives.

It’s a good thing that Obamacare, constructed on a foundation of health reform scare stories, doesn’t exist and never will.

Instead, the Affordable Care Act (which I support) is based on a similar law in Massachusetts that was signed by a Republican governor and openly supported by the administration of George W. Bush. It achieves the bulk of health insurance expansion by leveling the playing field for self-employed persons and employees of small businesses who, until now, didn’t have a fraction of the premium negotiating power of large corporations that pool risk and provide benefits regardless of health status.