Reference Pricing: A Small Piece of the Health Care Price and Quality Puzzle

By Chapin White, Megan Eguchi
National Institute for Health Care Reform, NIHCR Research Brief No. 18, October 2014

As purchasers seek strategies to reduce high health care provider prices, interest in reference pricing—or capping payment for a particular medical service—has grown significantly. However, potential savings to health plans and purchasers from reference pricing for medical services are modest, according to a new analysis by researchers at the former Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) using 2011 private insurance claims data for about 528,000 active and retired nonelderly autoworkers and their dependents. In 2011, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) adopted reference pricing for inpatient knee and hip replacements. Using quality and price information, CalPERS set an upper limit of $30,000—the reference price—for hospital facility services for a knee or hip replacement. CalPERS designated certain in-network hospitals as meeting the reference price, and patients using designated hospitals are responsible only for the health plan’s usual cost-sharing amounts. However, if patients use a non-designated hospital, they are responsible for both usual cost sharing and any amount beyond the $30,000 reference price. While reference pricing for inpatient services has some potential to steer patients to hospitals with better quality metrics, only limited savings—a few tenths of a percent of total spending—are possible from applying a similarly narrow reference pricing to other privately insured populations. The potential savings from reference pricing are modest for two reasons: Shoppable services only account for about a third of total spending, and reference pricing only directly affects prices at the high end of the price distribution. When considering reference pricing, employers and health plans need to weigh potential savings against increased plan complexity and financial risk to enrollees, along with the analytical and financial resources needed to create and manage the program.

From the Implications

The CalPERS reference pricing experience tells two different but equally true stories—a dramatic percentage decline in prices and spending on knee and hip replacements and an extremely small percentage decline in total spending. To significantly impact spending among the privately insured, reference pricing would have to be applied quite broadly. And, even using a very inclusive list of shoppable services, the potential savings are relatively modest.

Both conventional network-based plans—preferred provider organizations and health maintenance organizations—and reference pricing suffer some of the same limitations. Both types of plans rely on patient cost-sharing differentials to steer patients to certain providers, but the higher cost sharing cannot reasonably be applied in emergencies when patients can’t choose their provider. Also, both types of plans are vulnerable to the demands of dominant “must-have” providers, either to be in network or to be both in network and designated.

Compared to a limited-network plan, reference pricing faces at least three additional logistical hurdles. First, the health plan must have reliable price data for specific providers for specific services so that it can set the reference price and designate providers. Even very large plans will lack the historical data to accurately measure the prices they typically pay to smaller hospitals. Second, the plan would ideally have provider-specific quality metrics on hand that can be used to assure patients that they are not being steered to low-quality providers. Although hospital quality metrics and rankings abound, the methodologies behind those rankings are still under development. Third, reference pricing requires new customer-service tools to support shopping by patients and to deal with inevitable member complaints. Implementation would require commitment of significant resources by the plan, potentially offsetting some or all of the savings from reductions in payments to high-price providers.

The main disadvantage of reference pricing is that it adds a new layer of complexity for plan administrators and enrollees. Rather than facilities simply either being in or out of the network, there are now three types of facilities: in-network designated, in-network non-designated and out of network. Even more confusingly, a single facility might be designated for one type of service—for example, an inpatient hospital providing a knee replacement—but not designated for another—that same hospital providing a colonoscopy in an outpatient department. Additional complexity raises significant concerns, given that the basic elements of conventional benefit design are already beyond the grasp of many consumers.

One question is whether a reference pricing program can steer patients to lower-price, adequate-quality providers. The answer, based on the CalPERS experience, appears to be yes. But, that may not be the right question. A better question may be why private health plans would ever pay negotiated prices over $30,000 for inpatient knee and hip replacements. The CalPERS reference pricing program seemingly took a hard line against hospitals charging unreasonably high prices—$30,000 or more—for knee and hip replacements. But, is $30,000 really a reasonable price for an inpatient knee or hip replacement? To put that amount in perspective, the Medicare program on average paid $14,324 for inpatient knee and hip replacements in 2011.

http://www.nihcr.org/Reference-Pricing2

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Our policy wonks continue to look for methods of controlling health care costs that will protect the role of private insurers, and, above all, prevent us from drawing the inevitable conclusion that we desperately need a single payer national health program. Reference pricing is one more supposed cost-saving tool that has garnered much interest. What is it and will it work?

Reference pricing is a process in which a maximum price is set for a given medical service. The patient then either goes to a designated provider who has agreed to accept that amount, along with contracted patient cost sharing, as payment in full, or, if the patient chooses a provider with higher prices, the patient must pay the full difference.

California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) experimented with reference pricing by establishing $30,000 as a reference price for the hospital services for a knee or hip replacement. The experiment was considered to be a success based on the fact that 15 to 30 percent of patients who would have gone to a non-designated hospital switched and went to a designated hospital instead. But how do you define success?

The package fee that the private market was able to negotiate was $30,000. Medicare on average paid $14,324 for the same services. Is it a success when private insurers are paying double the fees set by a public insurer?

Some might consider it to be a success when the patient did not have to pay the difference between the reference price and the price that would have been charged in a non-designated hospital, though what is the patient giving up?

Consider how a decision is usually made to have a joint replacement. The patient typically goes to his or her primary care professional where initial evaluation indicates that a joint replacement may be indicated. A referral is made to a specialist qualified to do joint replacements. If the decision is made to go ahead with the procedure, arrangements are made with the hospital the specialist is associated with. But then the insurer intervenes and threatens the patient with severe financial penalties (all costs above the reference price) unless the patient agrees to give up the specialist and hospital that is part of the team of her primary care professional, either as a formal integrated health system or as an informal team of community professionals working together. To escape the financial penalty, the patient pays the penalty of disruption in care.

So what did this successful experiment that everyone wants to emulate actually accomplish? Care of 15 to 30 percent of patients was disrupted in exchange for establishing a cap on payment that was twice what Medicare pays, and yet netting only “an extremely small percentage decline in total spending.”

Another important consideration discussed in this report is that reference pricing significantly increases administrative complexity – just what we need in a system that is unique in the world for all of its profound administrative waste. But very telling is the comment in this report that some of this administrative increase will be in the form of new customer-service tools “to deal with inevitable member complaints.”

Great – a disruptive program that doesn’t work very well but ticks everyone off! We’ll say it again – single payer.

Low-Income Residents In Three States View Medicaid As Equal To Or Better Than Private Coverage, Support Expansion

By Arnold M. Epstein, Benjamin D. Sommers, Yelena Kuznetsov and Robert J. Blendon
Health Affairs, October 8, 2014 (online)

Abstract

Expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to millions of low-income adults has been controversial, yet little is known about what these Americans themselves think about Medicaid. We conducted a telephone survey in late 2013 of nearly 3,000 low-income adults in three Southern states—Arkansas, Kentucky, and Texas—that have adopted different approaches to the options for expansion. Nearly 80 percent of our sample in all three states favored Medicaid expansion, and approximately two-thirds of uninsured respondents said that they planned to apply for either Medicaid or subsidized private coverage in 2014. Yet awareness of their state’s actual expansion plans was low. Most viewed having Medicaid as better than being uninsured and at least as good as private insurance in overall quality and affordability. While the debate over Medicaid expansion continues, support for expansion is strong among low-income adults, and the perceived quality of Medicaid coverage is high.

From the Discussion

In our survey of nearly 3,000 low-income adults in three states, we found strong and consistent enthusiasm—among nearly 80 percent of respondents—for expanding Medicaid under the ACA and a more nuanced picture of whether it would be preferable to gain coverage via traditional Medicaid or subsidized private insurance.

Support for expansion by the population who would most likely be eligible for it may provide further impetus for expansion, although low-income adults and the uninsured may lack the clout to bring about this policy change in many states where the ACA remains unpopular among the political leadership.

Quality and affordability of care were generally rated as better with Medicaid coverage, while private coverage was seen as offering better access to and more respect from providers. These views represent a nuanced but reasonable comparison of Medicaid versus private health insurance and are consistent with some of the empirical evidence in this area. Recent studies indicate that Medicaid provides low-income adults with better financial protection than does private coverage, while lower reimbursement rates in Medicaid have been linked to lower physician participation rates in that program compared to private coverage. Favorable views toward Medicaid were most common among racial and ethnic minorities, people with lower education and income, and those in worse health.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/early/2014/10/02/hlthaff.2014.0747

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Medicaid, Often Criticized, Is Quite Popular With Its Customers

By Margot Sanger-Katz
The New York Times, October 9, 2014

A study published in the journal Health Affairs found that poor residents of Arkansas, Kentucky and Texas, when asked to compare Medicaid with private coverage, said that Medicaid offered better “quality of health care” and made them better able to “afford the health care” they needed.

Medicaid, the federal-state program for poor and disabled Americans, is a frequent political target, often described as substandard because of its restricted list of doctors and the red tape — sometimes even worse than no insurance at all.

But repeated surveys show that the program is quite popular among the people who use it.

When asked to consider it alongside other big, popular government programs, Medicaid compares favorably, said Robert Blendon, a public health professor at Harvard who studies public opinion on health care issues and was a co-author on the recent study. “It’s only when you compare it to Medicare, which is so much more popular than 96 percent of what the federal government does, that it looks unimpressive,” Mr. Blendon said.

The people surveyed by the Harvard researchers didn’t prefer Medicaid to private insurance in every respect. They gave private coverage the edge when it came to seeing “doctors you want, without having to wait too long” and “to have doctors treat you with care and respect.” But Medicaid came out ahead on the question of whether it enabled them to “be able to afford the health care you need,” and on the overall question of “quality of health care.”

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Comment:

By Don McCanne

Low-income patients strongly support the Medicaid program. It provides better financial protection than does private insurance, and they perceive the care to be of high quality. Their primary concern is that “private coverage was seen as offering better access to and more respect from providers” than does Medicaid.

When asked whether it was better to have Medicaid or to be uninsured, there was strong agreement that Medicaid patients have higher quality of care, have greater access to doctors, are treated with better respect, and, especially, are better able to afford the health care that they need, than are the uninsured.

In fact, according to Harvard’s Robert Blendon, Medicaid compares quite favorably to other popular government programs, though the support is “unimpressive” when compared to the support for Medicare.

Unfortunately, the politicians in many states do not seem to care. Even though the federal government would provide most of the funds, they would rather leave these people uninsured. Obviously, they could care less about the opinions of this low-income population that lacks political clout.

Why would Medicare be more popular than Medicaid? Medicare that is supplemented with Medigap, retiree plans, or Part C plans removes financial barriers to care, thus providing a similar level of financial protection as Medicaid – with the exception that Medicaid covers long term care as well. Medicaid does have the stigma of a welfare program whereas Medicare is considered to be an earned right available to all qualified by age or disability. The greatest reason that Medicare is preferred is that the patients have free choice of their physicians, including specialists.

Under what system would a low-income patient fare best? One in which the welfare stigma is removed, and everyone is treated equal. One in which financial barriers such as large deductibles and coinsurance are removed. One in which patients have free choice of their health care professionals and hospitals. One in which a high standard of quality is the norm for all. In other words, low-income patients would fare best is a system that would work well for all of us – a single-payer, improved Medicare for all.

Income Inequality and Rising Health-Care Costs

By Mark J. Warshawsky and Andrew G. Biggs
The Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2014

A new Kaiser Family Foundation survey reports that health-insurance premiums rose by a “modest” 3% in 2013. Even more modest, however, was the 2.3% growth of workers’ earnings last year. These figures merely illustrate a long-term trend of rising health costs eating away at wages. The real story is even more dramatic: Government data show that health costs are the biggest driver of income inequality in America today.

Most employers pay workers a combination of wages and benefits, the most important of which is health coverage. Economic theory says that when employers’ costs for benefits like health coverage rise, they will hold back on salary increases to keep total compensation costs in check. That’s exactly what seems to have happened: Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that from June 2004 to June 2014 compensation increased by 28% while employer health-insurance costs rose by 51%. Consequently, average wages grew by just 24%.

But here’s what the news headlines miss: Rising health costs don’t affect every employee the same. An average family health policy today costs employers nearly $12,000 per year, up from only $4,200 in 1999. Had employer premiums not risen, average salaries today would be around $7,800 higher. For a lower-income worker who today makes $30,000, that could have meant a 26% salary increase. By contrast, a “one percenter” making $250,000 today would have seen his earnings rise only by 3.1%. Health costs are a bigger share of total compensation for lower-wage workers, and so rising health costs hit their salaries the most. The result is higher income inequality.

These data give us a different perspective on the inequality debate. Most people think of income inequality as money “redistributed” from the poor to the rich. In reality, much of what we’re seeing is more of low-income workers’ compensation going toward their health benefits and less ending up in their pockets. That’s a different problem and points toward different solutions.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/mark-warshawsky-and-andrew-biggs-income-inequality-and-rising-health-care-costs-1412568847

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

This WSJ opinion article is from the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). When they say that “health costs are the biggest driver of income inequality in America today,” this should provide us with common ground to simultaneously address both income inequality and the health care crisis.

Unfortunately, in this article the authors further define the problem as over-insurance and a need for high-deductible health plans. Reducing benefits and increasing cost sharing would make the problems even worse for low- and moderate-income individuals and families.

Nevertheless we can agree that the current inequities in health care financing – which were inadequately addressed through the Affordable Care Act – are a significant contributor to income inequality. The most effective solution to address both would be to enact a progressively-financed single payer national health program (though further public policies would be required to temper the extremes of income and wealth inequality).

There is a glimmer of hope when the opponents of single payer recognize the problems, but that hope is dashed when they revert to ideological approaches that place an even greater burden on those more vulnerable.

Providing Quality Health Benefits for Our Associates

By Sally Welborn, Sr. Vice President, Global Benefits, Walmart
Walmart, October 7, 2014

In the U.S., the 1.3 million people who work at our stores, clubs and distribution centers are vital to a great experience for the 140 million customers shopping with us each week. We’re in business because our associates bring us their unique skills and talents – and so we do our absolute best to offer all the benefits that come with a great job, particularly affordable health insurance.

Like every company, Walmart continues to face rising health care costs. This year, the expenses were significant and led us to make some tough decisions as we begin our annual enrollment. As a result, today we announced that our associates will see an increase in premiums for 2015.

We’re also changing eligibility for some part-time associates. We will continue to provide affordable health care to all eligible associates, including part-time, who work more than 30 hours. However, similar to other retailers like Target, Home Depot, Walgreens and Trader Joe’s, we will no longer be providing health benefits to part-time associates who work less than 30 hours. This will impact about 2% of our total U.S. workforce. 

We don’t make these decisions lightly, and the fact remains that our plans exceed those of our peers in the retail industry. Our premiums remain well below the industry average compiled by expert Aon Hewitt.  We also continue to pay the majority of health care costs for associates covered under our medical plans. For example, on average we cover more than 60% of our associates’ total health care costs and more than 75% of their premium costs. In contrast, the retail industry pays, on average, about 54% of total health care costs and 68% of employee premiums.

http://blog.walmart.com/providing-quality-health-benefits-for-our-associates

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Walmart to End Health Coverage for 30,000 Part-Time Workers

By Hiroko Tabuchi
The New York Times, October 7, 2014

Walmart Stores, the world’s largest retailer and the nation’s largest private employer, said on Tuesday that it would terminate health insurance coverage for about 30,000 part-time workers, joining a string of retailers that have rolled back benefits in response to the Affordable Care Act.

Starting on Jan. 1, Walmart will no longer offer insurance to employees working less than an average of 30 hours a week, a move the retailer said was in response to an unexpected rise in health care costs.

The workers losing their coverage make up about 5 percent of the company’s part-time work force of about 600,000, including in-store, logistics and corporate workers, said Brooke Buchanan, a company spokeswoman. Walmart did not disclose what percentage of the part-time work force would be left without coverage. Many part-time employees were never covered for a variety of reasons.

Walmart said that it would work with a health coverage specialist to guide workers through the process of finding alternative coverage.

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Large retailers are infamous for low wages and limited benefits. Walmart has been a special target of critics, no doubt in part because a few members of the Walton family are amongst the very wealthiest people in the world – not just in the top 1 percent, but at the very top of the 0.01 percent. Providing more generous health benefits for all of their employees would cost only a small fraction of the annual net gain in wealth of the Walton family.

It is not as if Walmart’s health plans are comparable to those traditionally offered by most other large employers. According to their release, they cover only 60 percent of their employees’ health care costs – a level equivalent to the bronze plans in the very bottom tier of the insurance exchanges created by the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

As ACA was being crafted it was decided that employers would not have to provide health care coverage for employees working under 30 hours per week. To no surprise, many employers adjusted the hours of their part-time employees to avoid having to include them in their health plans. Walmart previously had less than 24 hours a week as the cut-off for providing health coverage, but they changed that to under 30 hours since ACA allowed them to get more hours out of their employees without having to provide health benefits.

Walmart intends to provide guidance to the 30,000 employees who will lose their insurance. Those with poverty level incomes will no doubt be directed to Medicaid in those states in which they are eligible. Those just above poverty wages will likely be sent to the exchanges where they may be eligible for generous taxpayer supported subsidies. Why should the Walton billionaires provide coverage for these workers when the taxpayers will do it for them?

This should provide a good test of the principle that almost all economists preach: that employer-sponsored health plans are paid for by the employee in the form of forgone wage increases. Now that 30,000 employees working 30 hours or less will lose their insurance, surely Walmart will provide them with wage increases equivalent to perhaps three-fourths of the the employer contribution to the health plan premiums (since they work three-fourths of the full time hours). Walmart takes every opportunity to publicize how well they are taking care of their employees, yet they remain silent on wage increases for those losing their insurance. Economists need to take another look at the slight of hand revealing the deception of the forgone wage increases. Wage increases are forgone when health care costs increase for the employer, but just try to get the employers to restore alleged forgone wages when the health benefits are terminated.

When we change to a single payer national health program – and we will – employers will be relieved of their responsibility under ACA to provide health insurance for their employees. At that time efforts can be concentrated on ensuring that employees then receive living wages. That could be another great spin-off benefit of an improved Medicare for all.

An Interview With George Halvorson: The Kaiser Permanente Renaissance, And Health Reform’s Unfinished Business

By Jeff Goldsmith
Health Affairs Blog, September 30, 2014

Kaiser (Permanente) surprised the health plan community by announcing in March 2002 the selection of a non-physician, George Halvorson, as its new CEO. 

During his twelve year tenure as CEO, Halvorson not only guided the plan to solid profitability, but added a million members in California, its largest market, despite a devastating recession and a national retreat of commercial HMO membership.

The Growth Of High-Deductible Health Plans

Jeff Goldsmith: If you look at the Kaiser/HRET survey, which focuses on the employer segment, the HMO wedge shrinks while the high deductible health plan wedge seem to grow in proportion. In 2013, High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) represented around 30 million lives.  Are HDHPs “managed care” in your view?

George Halvorson: Yes. I think they are a form of managed care.  HDHPs get involved to some degree in delivery of care.  They require care/data reporting.  They have some care protocols or some care-related elements they don’t allow. So I would classify all those plans and products under the broad category of managed care. If employers buy a $500 dollar deductible plan from Kaiser Permanente — and about 10 percent of Kaiser members are now in plans that have deductibles that are high or higher — the employees still get their care at KP.  When they pay the fee for the office visit, they pay KP as opposed to paying it outside, so that the cash flow for KP is basically the same.  It just comes down two separate channels, copays and premiums, instead of coming down one prepaid premium channel.

Goldsmith: How hard was it for your colleagues, particularly the Permanente physicians, to accept the philosophical change that required?  In the legacy Kaiser model, there was no cost to the patient.

Halvorson: Everyone at KP, including myself, strongly preferred the model where there was no cost for the patient.  However if 10 percent of our employer customers want to buy a high deductible product and we don’t sell it to them, then they leave. Kaiser has hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, lots of care-related infrastructure that would not do as well if 10 percent of the patients were gone.  It is important to point out that we made a very conscious decision to not change care in any way for those patients. That was a critical issue. It is easier to maintain the old approach for all patients because 90 percent of the KP’s members are still in the older benefit model.

Goldsmith: Of the million people that were added to Kaiser in California during your time as CEO in California, how many of them came because of this change in your benefits strategy?

Halvorson: Now about 10 percent of Kaiser’s members are in plans with deductibles of some kind. I personally went to California’s managed care regulators and worked to persuade them to allow us to offer the product.  I had to give them assurances that we would not be changing the delivery of care for those members in any way. Those members would not be there if we had not offered a product with personal financial exposure in it.

Goldsmith: Did the high deductibles make your job as a care system easier or harder?

Halvorson: Harder.

Goldsmith: Why?

Halvorson: Because we had to bill the patient.

Goldsmith: What else besides the billing?

Halvorson: The billing was the major issue.

Goldsmith: It didn’t make it more difficult for you to get them to do things that were in their own health interest, even if it cost them money?

Halvorson: Because we are who we are and because we ask people to do what we ask them to do in a very consistent and reasonable way, members tend to follow. We didn’t see a lot of people refusing to get needed care based on the fact that they had deductibles. That was largely because we are so committed to a particular set of care concepts and protocols that the credibility of the individual caregiver for the patient triumphed over the financial exposure.

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2014/09/30/an-interview-with-george-halvorson-the-kaiser-permanente-renaissance-and-health-reforms-unfinished-business/

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Former Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson said, “Everyone at KP, including myself, strongly preferred the model where there was no cost for the patient.” So why did they start selling plans with deductibles?

Simply stated, it was because many employers demanded deductibles and other forms of cost sharing. Deductibles have become a standard throughout the insurance industry, and most employers like them because the premiums paid are lower since up front costs of health care are being shifted to their employees’ pockets.

Yet Halvorson said that deductibles made their job as a health care system harder, mainly because of the administrative inefficiencies of having to bill each patient for these charges. Kaiser received the same total amount but they had to establish “two separate channels, copays and premiums, instead of coming down one prepaid premium channel.”

Either way, the employees were paying the costs – through forgone wage increases that paid the premiums, or through direct out-of-pocket payment of the deductibles. The only reason for making this change was the pigheadedness of the employers who insisted, based primarily on misguided ideology, that they wanted to join the high deductible, consumer-directed bandwagon.

It is well known that deductibles frequently cause individuals to forgo appropriate care which can then result in adverse health outcomes. Halvorson said that they “didn’t see a lot of people refusing to get needed care.” Without the data it is hard to know, but since most of Kaiser’s patients have decent jobs with employer-sponsored plans, these are patients from a relatively healthy sector of the population, mostly with reasonable incomes, so they may be less likely to forgo appropriate care. But even amongst Kaiser’s patient population, there will be some who will find deductibles to be significant barriers to care.

There is nothing good about Kaiser’s deductibles, but there are several things that are bad. And this is in the best of circumstances.

With a single payer system there would be no deductibles, just as there were not in Kaiser’s legacy system. Perhaps the most revealing comment Halvorson made is that before and after instituting deductibles, “the cash flow for KP is basically the same.” It didn’t make a difference; it just mucked things up!

Medicaid Demonstrations: HHS’s Approval Process for Arkansas’s Medicaid Expansion Waiver Raises Cost Concerns

GAO, Released September 8, 2014

What GAO Found

In approving Arkansas’s Medicaid Section 1115 demonstration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gave the state the authority to test whether providing premium assistance to purchase private coverage offered on the health insurance exchange will improve access to care for individuals newly eligible for Medicaid as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

In approving the demonstration, HHS did not ensure that the demonstration would be budget- neutral — that is, that the federal government would spend no more under the state’s demonstration than it would have spent without the demonstration. Specifically, HHS approved a spending limit for the demonstration that was based, in part, on hypothetical costs — significantly higher payment amounts the state assumed it would have to make to providers if it expanded coverage under the traditional Medicaid program — without requesting any data from the state to support the state’s assumptions. GAO estimated that, by including these costs, the 3-year, nearly $4.0 billion spending limit that HHS approved for the state’s demonstration was approximately $778 million more than what the spending limit would have been if it was based on the state’s actual payment rates for services under the traditional Medicaid program. Furthermore, HHS gave Arkansas the flexibility to adjust the spending limit if actual costs under the demonstration proved higher than expected, and HHS officials told us that the Department granted the same flexibility to 11 other states implementing demonstrations that affect services for newly eligible beneficiaries. Finally, HHS, in effect, waived its cost-effectiveness requirement that providing premium assistance to purchase individual coverage prove comparable to the cost of providing direct coverage under the state’s Medicaid plan, further increasing the risk that the demonstration would not be budget-neutral.

As of June 2014, HHS has approved one additional state’s — Iowa’s — demonstration to use premium assistance to purchase exchange coverage. Iowa’s demonstration is more limited in scope in that it covers a portion of the expansion population, those with incomes of 101 percent to 133 percent of the federal poverty level. As with its approval of the Arkansas demonstration, HHS gave Iowa the flexibility to adjust its spending limit and waived the cost-effectiveness requirement. According to HHS officials, three other states as of June 2014 had indicated an interest in implementing a similar approach.

In commenting on a draft of this report, HHS disagreed with GAO’s findings that HHS’s approval process did not ensure that the Arkansas demonstration will be budget-neutral. GAO maintains the validity of these findings.

What GAO Recommends

GAO is not making recommendations in this report. GAO has had long-standing concerns with HHS’s policy, process, and criteria for reviewing and approving section 1115 demonstrations, including the lack of transparency in the basis for approved spending limits. GAO has previously reported that HHS’s budget neutrality policy and process did not provide assurances that demonstrations would be budget-neutral to the federal government. Among other concerns, GAO reported that HHS allows methods for establishing the spending limit that GAO believes are inappropriate, such as allowing states to include hypothetical costs — expenditures that the state could have made under its Medicaid program but did not — in establishing the baseline for the spending limits. As a result, GAO has made a number of recommendations in the past to improve the budget neutrality process for Medicaid demonstrations. In 2008, because HHS disagreed that changes to the budget neutrality policy and review process were needed, we suggested that Congress require the Secretary of HHS to improve the demonstration review process by, for example, better ensuring that valid methods are used to demonstrate budget neutrality.

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-689R

From the full GAO report:

HHS’s approval of $778 million dollars of hypothetical costs in the Arkansas demonstration spending limit and the department’s waiver of its cost-effectiveness requirement is further evidence of our long-standing concerns that HHS is approving demonstrations that may not be budget-neutral. HHS’s approval of the Arkansas demonstration suggests that the Secretary may continue to approve section 1115 Medicaid demonstrations that raise federal costs, inconsistent with the Department’s policy of budget neutrality. Moreover, the additional flexibility granted to Arkansas and 11 other states to increase the spending limit if costs prove higher than expected sets another precedent, further eroding the integrity of HHS’s process. If, as it did with Arkansas, HHS allows states to use an approach to expanding Medicaid that is expected to cost more than expansion under the existing Medicaid program with fewer cost controls in place, there could be significant cost implications for the federal government. Efforts to ensure cost- effectiveness and budget neutrality in Medicaid expansion demonstrations have even greater fiscal implications given that states that choose to do so will receive enhanced federal funding for the newly eligible population.

http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/665265.pdf

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Our two major public programs for health care financing – Medicare and Medicaid – continue down the path of privatization, with the complicity of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

We’ve reported many times that the private Medicare Advantage plans that are displacing the traditional Medicare program have been deliberately funded well in excess of that allotted for traditional Medicare, both by acts of Congress and by administrative chicanery at HHS.

Now the GAO reveals that HHS has also used the section 1115 Medicaid waiver process to allow states to not only transfer their Medicaid patients to private health plans, but to also allow them to meet the higher costs of private plans, through innovative chicanery such as “allowing states to include hypothetical costs — expenditures that the state could have made under its Medicaid program but did not — in establishing the baseline for the spending limits.”

Although privatization of Medicare and Medicaid has long been a Republican goal, since the neo-liberals have dominated the Democratic leadership, they have aided and abetted this effort. We are supposed to be a democracy, yet no matter how we vote, we are electing politicians who spend more of our tax and premium dollars on the administrative waste and mediocre performance of the private insurers. Any suggestions?