Kaiser Family Foundation
December 2010

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to work in collaboration with state insurance departments to conduct an annual review of “unreasonable increases in premiums” for “nongrandfathered” health plans. Plans that propose an unreasonable rate will be required to provide a justification for the increase to HHS, and post the justification on their websites.

Yet the ACA does not alter states’ existing regulatory authority over health insurance rates. Such state authority varies dramatically, ranging from states with no authority at all to those that have robust authority to review and approve or disapprove rates before they are implemented.

Key findings include the following:

A state’s statutory authority often tells little about how rate review is actually conducted in the state.

In many cases, statutory authority to disapprove rates does not extend to all market participants.

Most states we interviewed use a subjective standard to guide the review and approval of rates.

Most of the states we interviewed have made little or no effort to make rate filings transparent.

Many states lack the capacity and resources to conduct an adequate review.

http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/8122.pdf

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

Proponents of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) have claimed that states will be given broad powers to control private health insurance premiums, making health plans affordable again. Can we really anticipate relief from the outrageous prices of private health plans?

Under ACA, the federal role in premium regulation is limited to reviewing unreasonable rate increases and requiring plans to post on their websites a justification for their increases. The law does not alter the states’ existing regulatory authority over health insurance rates.

So how well are the states doing? Not very well. You need only look at the numerous media reports of outrageous premium increases that have provoked the state regulators to demand explanations for these unconscionable incidences of rate gouging (is it really gouging?). The followup stories reveal that the regulators have been successful in convincing insurers to roll back their increases to mere multiples of the rate of inflation. Year after year. The current level of premiums is proof that the state regulators have been ineffective in making decent health plans affordable.

This report from the Kaiser Family Foundation confirms that state regulation is spotty at best, but we know that even in states with greater regulatory power, premiums have continued to rise inexorably. The only successes in slowing premium increases have been in those instances in which the regulators permit plans to strip benefits and shift costs to patients. Of course, that has resulted in making health care unaffordable, impairing access and sometimes resulting in personal bankruptcy.

If a plan is going to provide adequate coverage for health services, those costs will have to be paid by the insurer, and there is no way that state insurance regulators can demand a rollback to rates that would deplete the insurers’ reserves and drive them into bankruptcy.

It’s nice that the Department of Health and Human Services has been granted the authority to require the insurers to post explanations for why their premiums are so high (it’s the costs of health care, stupid), but it is disingenuous to say that this would have any real impact in slowing premium increases for adequate insurance plans.

An unfortunate, unique feature of health care financing in the United States is the profound administrative waste that has been a major contributor to placing us first amongst all nations in what we spend on health care. The premium game that state insurance regulators are playing is only one more example of that waste.

Single payer supporters already know what we should do to reduce this egregious waste. Eliminate the insurance middlemen and replace them with our own public monopsony (single buyer) – an improved Medicare for everyone. Then we can use more effective and more equitable single payer tools to slow future cost increases.

Rate Review: Spotlight on State Efforts to Make Health Insurance More Affordable

Kaiser Family Foundation
December 2010

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to work in collaboration with state insurance departments to conduct an annual review of “unreasonable increases in premiums” for “nongrandfathered” health plans. Plans that propose an unreasonable rate will be required to provide a justification for the increase to HHS, and post the justification on their websites.

Yet the ACA does not alter states’ existing regulatory authority over health insurance rates. Such state authority varies dramatically, ranging from states with no authority at all to those that have robust authority to review and approve or disapprove rates before they are implemented.

Key findings include the following:

A state’s statutory authority often tells little about how rate review is actually conducted in the state.

In many cases, statutory authority to disapprove rates does not extend to all market participants.

Most states we interviewed use a subjective standard to guide the review and approval of rates.

Most of the states we interviewed have made little or no effort to make rate filings transparent.

Many states lack the capacity and resources to conduct an adequate review.

http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/8122.pdf

Proponents of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) have claimed that states will be given broad powers to control private health insurance premiums, making health plans affordable again. Can we really anticipate relief from the outrageous prices of private health plans?

Under ACA, the federal role in premium regulation is limited to reviewing unreasonable rate increases and requiring plans to post on their websites a justification for their increases. The law does not alter the states’ existing regulatory authority over health insurance rates.

So how well are the states doing? Not very well. You need only look at the numerous media reports of outrageous premium increases that have provoked the state regulators to demand explanations for these unconscionable incidences of rate gouging (is it really gouging?). The followup stories reveal that the regulators have been successful in convincing insurers to roll back their increases to mere multiples of the rate of inflation. Year after year. The current level of premiums is proof that the state regulators have been ineffective in making decent health plans affordable.

This report from the Kaiser Family Foundation confirms that state regulation is spotty at best, but we know that even in states with greater regulatory power, premiums have continued to rise inexorably. The only successes in slowing premium increases have been in those instances in which the regulators permit plans to strip benefits and shift costs to patients. Of course, that has resulted in making health care unaffordable, impairing access and sometimes resulting in personal bankruptcy.

If a plan is going to provide adequate coverage for health services, those costs will have to be paid by the insurer, and there is no way that state insurance regulators can demand a rollback to rates that would deplete the insurers’ reserves and drive them into bankruptcy.

It’s nice that the Department of Health and Human Services has been granted the authority to require the insurers to post explanations for why their premiums are so high (it’s the costs of health care, stupid), but it is disingenuous to say that this would have any real impact in slowing premium increases for adequate insurance plans.

An unfortunate, unique feature of health care financing in the United States is the profound administrative waste that has been a major contributor to placing us first amongst all nations in what we spend on health care. The premium game that state insurance regulators are playing is only one more example of that waste.

Single payer supporters already know what we should do to reduce this egregious waste. Eliminate the insurance middlemen and replace them with our own public monopsony (single buyer) – an improved Medicare for everyone. Then we can use more effective and more equitable single payer tools to slow future cost increases.

C-SPAN
December 1, 2010

From a discussion of the final recommendations, to be voted on by December 3:

Sen Dick Durbin (D-IL):  We are hastening the day when the only option left will be a public option. 

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI):  I think Sen. Durbin probably said it right. We are hastening the day when the only option is the public option. I think you’re right (directed to Sen. Durbin), and I think that this advances that possibility and likelihood.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX):  I would agree with Sen. Durbin… you are hastening more people into the public option.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL):  To say that we’re going to reduce our deficit and our debt by asking Medicare beneficiaries to pay more for their health care, I think is absolutely unconscionable.   …already 30 percent of their income going to health care costs, I think is absolutely the wrong way to go when we do have other options. I put on the table, not as an if-all-else fails, a public option to reduce health care costs.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/12/01/HP/R/41336/Debt+Commission+recommends+Dramatic+Budget+Cuts+Votes+Friday.aspx

PNHP has issued a response to the commission recommendations:
“Deficit panel’s Rx is wrong medicine: doctors’ group”
https://pnhp.org/news/2010/december/deficit-panels-rx-is-wrong-medicine-doctors-group

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

The commission members understand that health care is the greatest contributor to our federal budget deficit. Most of them recognize that the health spending recommendations in their final report are inadequate to control continuing cost escalation.

Some would reduce government spending by shifting more costs to Medicare beneficiaries, even though they understand that current out-of-pocket costs are already excessively burdensome. To others, that would be unconscionable.

There seemed to be an understanding by both Democratic and Republican commission members that the failure to control Medicare spending will hasten the day when the public option will be the only option.

Why a public option? Apparently there is bipartisan agreement that a government insurance program would be more effective in slowing future health care spending. They understand that government systems have worked well in other nations.

Where they are confused is that they seem to think that all you need is the option of choosing a government plan, and that is enough to enable all of the single payer efficiencies. Of course, this is where they’re wrong. A government plan offered within our market of private plans is incapable of instituting most of the changes that make single payer systems work. As simply another player in our fragmented, dysfunctional system, it would be a very feeble force for efficiency.

So what does this really mean? It says that both Republicans and Democrats know that we are going to have to have direct government involvement if we ever hope to control health care spending, but they still need to learn that there is a tremendous difference between a powerful single payer monopsony and a wimpy public option.

Final Report of National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

C-SPAN
December 1, 2010

From a discussion of the final recommendations, to be voted on by December 3:

Sen Dick Durbin (D-IL):  We are hastening the day when the only option left will be a public option. 

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI):  I think Sen. Durbin probably said it right. We are hastening the day when the only option is the public option. I think you’re right (directed to Sen. Durbin), and I think that this advances that possibility and likelihood.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX):  I would agree with Sen. Durbin… you are hastening more people into the public option.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL):  To say that we’re going to reduce our deficit and our debt by asking Medicare beneficiaries to pay more for their health care, I think is absolutely unconscionable.   …already 30 percent of their income going to health care costs, I think is absolutely the wrong way to go when we do have other options. I put on the table, not as an if-all-else fails, a public option to reduce health care costs.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/12/01/HP/R/41336/Debt+Commission+recommends+Dramatic+Budget+Cuts+Votes+Friday.aspx

PNHP has issued a response to the commission recommendations:
“Deficit panel’s Rx is wrong medicine: doctors’ group”
https://www.pnhp.org/news/2010/december/deficit-panels-rx-is-wrong-medicine-doctors-group

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

The commission members understand that health care is the greatest contributor to our federal budget deficit. Most of them recognize that the health spending recommendations in their final report are inadequate to control continuing cost escalation.

Some would reduce government spending by shifting more costs to Medicare beneficiaries, even though they understand that current out-of-pocket costs are already excessively burdensome. To others, that would be unconscionable.

There seemed to be an understanding by both Democratic and Republican commission members that the failure to control Medicare spending will hasten the day when the public option will be the only option.

Why a public option? Apparently there is bipartisan agreement that a government insurance program would be more effective in slowing future health care spending. They understand that government systems have worked well in other nations.

Where they are confused is that they seem to think that all you need is the option of choosing a government plan, and that is enough to enable all of the single payer efficiencies. Of course, this is where they’re wrong. A government plan offered within our market of private plans is incapable of instituting most of the changes that make single payer systems work. As simply another player in our fragmented, dysfunctional system, it would be a very feeble force for efficiency.

So what does this really mean? It says that both Republicans and Democrats know that we are going to have to have direct government involvement if we ever hope to control health care spending, but they still need to learn that there is a tremendous difference between a powerful single payer monopsony and a wimpy public option.

Final Report of National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

C-SPAN
December 1, 2010

From a discussion of the final recommendations, to be voted on by December 3:

Sen Dick Durbin (D-IL): We are hastening the day when the only option left will be a public option.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI): I think Sen. Durbin probably said it right. We are hastening the day when the only option is the public option. I think you’re right (directed to Sen. Durbin), and I think that this advances that possibility and likelihood.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX): I would agree with Sen. Durbin… you are hastening more people into the public option.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL): To say that we’re going to reduce our deficit and our debt by asking Medicare beneficiaries to pay more for their health care, I think is absolutely unconscionable.   …already 30 percent of their income going to health care costs, I think is absolutely the wrong way to go when we do have other options. I put on the table, not as an if-all-else fails, a public option to reduce health care costs.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/12/01/HP/R/41336/Debt+Commission+recommends+Dramatic+Budget+Cuts+Votes+Friday.aspx

PNHP has issued a response to the commission recommendations:
“Deficit panel’s Rx is wrong medicine: doctors’ group”
https://pnhp.org/news/2010/december/deficit-panels-rx-is-wrong-medicine-doctors-group

The commission members understand that health care is the greatest contributor to our federal budget deficit. Most of them recognize that the health spending recommendations in their final report are inadequate to control continuing cost escalation.

Some would reduce government spending by shifting more costs to Medicare beneficiaries, even though they understand that current out-of-pocket costs are already excessively burdensome. To others, that would be unconscionable.

There seemed to be an understanding by both Democratic and Republican commission members that the failure to control Medicare spending will hasten the day when the public option will be the only option.

Why a public option? Apparently there is bipartisan agreement that a government insurance program would be more effective in slowing future health care spending. They understand that government systems have worked well in other nations.

Where they are confused is that they seem to think that all you need is the option of choosing a government plan, and that is enough to enable all of the single payer efficiencies. Of course, this is where they’re wrong. A government plan offered within our market of private plans is incapable of instituting most of the changes that make single payer systems work. As simply another player in our fragmented, dysfunctional system, it would be a very feeble force for efficiency.

So what does this really mean? It says that both Republicans and Democrats know that we are going to have to have direct government involvement if we ever hope to control health care spending, but they still need to learn that there is a tremendous difference between a powerful single payer monopsony and a wimpy public option.

Blue Shield, Kaiser among state insurers fined

By Victoria Colliver
San Francisco Chronicle
November 30, 2010

State regulators Monday fined seven of California’s largest health insurers nearly $5 million for systematically failing to pay doctors and hospitals fairly and on time.

The California Department of Managed Health Care issued the fines following an 18-month audit in which investigators looked at a small but statistically significant sample of claims. The investigation found the plans were paying on average about 80 percent of the claims correctly, far below the legal threshold of 95 percent.

“Our clear and consistent message is that California’s hospitals and physicians must be paid fairly and on time,” said Cindy Ehnes, director of the Department of Managed Health Care, which is charged with regulating the states’ health maintenance organizations, or HMOs.

In addition to the fines, the companies must pay the doctors and hospitals restitution that is expected to run into the “tens of millions of dollars,” Ehnes said. The plans will also be required to come up with a plan to correct the problem and submit to future audits.

Five of the insurers, excluding Anthem and Blue Shield, were also found to have improper provider appeals processes.

When doctors and hospital officials try to dispute a claim, they often have to deal with the same individual who originally denied the claim in the appeals process, Ehnes said.

Cracking down on the health plans for not properly paying providers helps consumers, said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California.

“Consumers would rather that the time and resources of health providers go to patient care, rather than in fighting to get insurers to pay correctly,” he said.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/30/BUSR1GJ01V.DTL

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

What services do the private insurers provide for us? Processing claims? They won’t even do that right 20 percent of the time, according to this California audit. The total of $5 million in fines that they were assessed is so paltry that they have no incentive to discontinue their highly profitable policy of delaying and denying legitimate claims.

Let’s have the members of Congress fire the insurers and set up our own national health program – an improved Medicare that covers everyone. If they won’t do that then let’s fire them, replacing them with responsible elected stewards who will.

Times of India
Nov 26, 2010

Joseph Stiglitz the Nobel prize-winning economist has written several articles on the inequity in access to health and the flaws in the drug discovery process of pharmaceutical companies. On a recent visit to Delhi, Professor Stiglitz spoke to Rema Nagarajan about the negative role of patents in drug discovery and the pitfalls of private insurance in health.

Why have you been pitching for a single payer system for health insurance rather than a system where several private companies compete?
The US model of private health insurers has been proven inefficient and expensive. Insurance companies have a very strong incentive to do cream skimming. They make more money figuring out the high cost and low cost people. Rather than provide better healthcare at lower costs, insurance companies innovate at finding better ways of discrimination. They are inefficient because they are trying to figure out how to insure people who don’t need the cover and keep out people who need it. With many companies, they also need to spend on marketing and advertising. The incentives are all wrong and the transaction costs are very high and you have to give them a high profit. In health, social and private incentives are totally disparate. Competition does not work in healthcare especially in the health insurance market. Several countries like the UK, France and Sweden have a single payer system, differing only in the organisation of healthcare delivery. People in these countries have done much better than the US.

Several health insurance companies are setting up business here. Should India be worried?
India would be in a terrible mess, given the size of its population, if it went down the wrong route (of private companies for health insurance). They should learn from the mess that the US has got into. Once the companies start making profits, special interests in politics will come into play and it will be difficult to get them out. In India, given the disparities in income, a single system for delivery might not work. So, it will probably need a mixture of public and private provision or maybe public healthcare for basic clinics and reimbursement for others, or the UK model where provisioning or delivery is also through public institutions.

Are you against intellectual property especially in health research into medicines?
I am not against intellectual property (IP). But the benefits of IP have been exaggerated and the costs underestimated. IP creates monopolies. And it does interfere with economic efficiency by interfering with the flow of knowledge and the use of knowledge, particularly for developing countries. IP is related to many different categories, like IP related to entertainment which is a completely different category from IP related to medicines. And IP appropriate to developing countries is different from what is appropriate to developed countries. The Trade related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) agreement is trying to impose the same IP framework on everybody. The question is whether IP promotes innovation. Increasingly, the evidence is that it may actually impede innovation. It is leading to infinite negotiations around patents. More money is being spent on lawyers than on research. The legal cost of using the system takes up more resources than the benefits from the system. New ideas are the most important input into research. IP is making that input difficult to get. We need some IP. But we also need to find better ways of financing and incentivising research such as government-sponsored research.

Is it viable for governments to finance drug research?
Yes, public financing of drug research is financially viable. In a system where government pays for drugs, it is in effect, the government or the public who pay for hugely expensive drugs. Is this an efficient way of public spending? Drug companies greatly exaggerate the cost, especially on research and if you broke down their costs, you would see that basic research is done by the government. The applied research of a particular molecule is mostly done by small companies, often linked to universities, which is still private. But the biggest cost is testing of the drugs and that is usually blown up and often includes promotion costs. There could be public funded testing of drugs and the costs could be recovered when you sell the drugs. The net saving would be enormous. For India, this alternative model of drug testing could be a revenue generator also because India has the scientific and research capacity and the production capacity, being a dominant player in the generic business. Maybe, the IP framework is actually impeding India. I have argued that for the US too.

Will clinical trials conducted by governments be more reliable?
The very guy who will make billions from the sale of a drug is asked to do the clinical trial to test its safety. It gives rise to conflict of interest. There is always an accident or mistake or whatever by which they fail to report the negative effects of a drug as happened in the case of the drug Vioxx. From an economist point of view it is predictable. You cannot have people, who will make billions from the drug, test it. It is like self regulation of banking structures. It is totally flawed from an economic point of view. The government could set up a separate agency or company that is government financed to do the clinical trials and recuperate the money spent from the fees charged for the drugs.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/The-US-model-of-private-health-insurers-is-inefficient-expensive/articleshow/6989634.cms