10 Lesser Known Effects of Healthcare Reform Law

This is a great article published by CNN this morning.

View it in it’s entirety Here

(CNN) — On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court takes on a political, social, economic and medical hot potato: the health care reform law that was signed into law two years ago.

For six hours during each of the next three days, attorneys will argue and justices will consider legal questions about the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and issues surrounding federal versus state powers.

Read a transcript of Monday’s Supreme Court arguments

Many of the law’s major aspects have been the topic of much discussion. But are you aware that deep within the sweeping law’s 2,700 pages are many lesser known changes that could affect your life in unexpected ways?

CNN Explains: Health care reform

1. How many goodies your doctors get

Is your doctor prescribing you certain drugs because those are the best for your condition or because of a pharmaceutical company’s influence? Here’s one way you can find out.

The Physician Payment Sunshine Act under health care reform requires drug, device or medical supply companies to report annually certain payments or things of value that they’ve given physicians and teaching hospitals. This could be speaking fees, consulting fees, meals and travel. So, you can find out which and how much companies pay doctors or health care workers. The companies are obligated to report annually about physician ownership and their financial investments.

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Supreme Court Weighing Healthcare Reform Law

So many questions, so few answers. But the answers are coming! Here are some of our favorite stories out right now:

Via Yahoo News, Liz Goodwin, The Lookout

Could President Obama’s sweeping health care reform law survive if the court strikes down the requirement that all Americans buy insurance?

The short answer is yes — but insurance companies certainly won’t be happy about it.

Both Justice Department lawyers and their challengers agree that the individual mandate is not “separable” from the rest of the law, which means the rest of the law can’t survive if the individual mandate is surgically removed by the court.

The lower courts have been split on the question, but one of them, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled in August that only the mandate should be struck down, leaving the rest of the law’s provisions — including an expansion of Medicaid to cover all low-income people and federal subsidies for lower-income and middle-class people to buy insurance — in place.

That decision no doubt sent shivers down the spines of some insurance executives. Striking down the mandate could be a nightmare scenario for the health insurance industry, since the rest of the law compels them to accept sick customers and to not charge higher premiums based on a customer’s health, age or gender. Sick customers would flood the insurance market and drive up costs, while young, healthy uninsured people would take their chances and not buy coverage, in what insurers worry would be a “death spiral” of rising costs.

Via The Associated Press, Boston Herald 

DONALD B. VERRILLI JR.

Verrilli is solicitor general of the United States, the government’s official representative in front of the Supreme Court. He was confirmed to his position last June as the replacement for Justice Elena Kagan after serving as associate deputy attorney general and an associate White House counsel in the Obama administration. A graduate Columbia Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review, he was a law clerk for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and a partner at Jenner & Block, where he co-chaired the firm’s Supreme Court practice. He has argued more than a dozen times before the Supreme Court, and worked as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law School from 1992 through 2008. In 1994, as special counsel to President Bill Clinton, he assisted in the confirmation process for Justice Stephen Breyer.

Official biography: http://www.justice.gov/osg/meet-osg.html

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PAUL CLEMENT

Clement is a former solicitor general, having served in that position for President George W. Bush. When confirmed, he was the youngest solicitor general in 115 years at age 38. Clement graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School one year behind Obama, and clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia. He has argued more than 55 cases at the Supreme Court, and served as the chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights. A partner at Bancroft PLLC, he is a Georgetown University law professor and a former partner at King & Spalding. He resigned from there after the firm decided not to continue its representation of the U.S. House of Representatives in its attempt to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. Clement was one of the lawyers who made the successful argument in front of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta that would strike down the law’s core requirement that individuals carry health insurance or pay a penalty

Official biography: http://www.bancroftpllc.com/professionals/paul-d-clement/

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MICHAEL A. CARVIN

Another former Justice Department official, Carvin’s most famous argument was delivered to the Florida Supreme Court on behalf of soon-to-be President George W. Bush in the Florida recount controversy during the 2000 presidential election. A graduate of George Washington University’s law school in 1982, Carvin has worked as deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which is responsible for legal opinions that are binding on the Executive Branch, deputy assistant attorney general and special assistant to the assistant attorney general in the department’s civil rights division. He will be representing the National Federation of Independent Businesses, which was a party to the lawsuit in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta that struck down the law’s core requirement that individuals buy health insurance or pay a penalty.

Official biography: http://www.jonesday.com/macarvin

Richard Wolf, USA Today, via the Pensacola News Journal

WASHINGTON — Health coverage for more than 30 million people. The power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. President Obama’s re-election chances. The reputation of the Supreme Court and the legacy of its chief justice.

And to hear some tell it: liberty.

All that and more could be at stake today when the Supreme Court begins a historic three days of oral arguments on the 2010 health care law that has become a symbol of the nation’s deep political divide.

All that and more could be at stake today when the Supreme Court begins a historic three days of oral arguments on the 2010 health care law that has become a symbol of the nation’s deep political divide.

Not since the court confirmed George W. Bush’s election in December 2000 — before 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, Wall Street’s dive and Obama’s rise — has one case carried such sweeping implications for nearly every American.

STAY TUNED!

The Money Is In The Management

Conversation regarding ACOs and even healthcare reform itself is misplaced.  The well established facts are (1) more people will receive health care, and (2) the cost of healthcare will come down.  It does not matter whether the stimulus is a new law or just marketplace reaction.  The fact is that a healthcare system whose players are incentivized to do more with more expensive stuff is not economically sustainable or socially tolerable.

Take a look at our evolving marketplace.  What’s the single most distinctive feature in healthcare, aside from inactivity?  Integration.  Larger hospital systems and larger medical practices, typically single specialty.  Good adaptation?  Maybe.  It is in the short run.  Single specialty aggregation is purely defensive though.  It allows groups to maintain market share and to resist price compression better.  But how will that allow providers to do more with less?  How will that stimulate more outcome based, financial risk based care?  It doesn’t.  It is well established that cost and quality management demands broad spectrum system awareness….ummmm primary care physicians.  The adaptation of single specialty group integration is short term.  How short?  Who knows?  But it is clearly not as sustainable as one whose preparation for change includes primary care capabilities.

And how do hospital-based physician alliances help physicians survive and thrive?  They don’t unless they have a strong primary care base, and even then it is very questionable whether hospitals will be able to utilize their PCPs and specialists in a way that rewards outcomes based, financially smart behavior.  Hospitals have always been sink holes in the landscape of healthcare costs, so why jump in?  Physicians need to make sure that their affiliated hospital systems have clear plans and abilities (e.g. management and good physician billing and collection experience) to deliver outcomes at the right price.  Studies, however, that indicate over sixty percent of Florida hospital admissions are unnecessary are consoling in a fee for service environment, but devastating in a capitated (or other risk based) one.  Physicians have to make sure the ship they book passage on can sail a long way.

And they have to make sure they are part of the right team.  What expertise is there in things like IT, financial management, clinical outcomes management, and risk based contracting?  You’re gonna need that!

If one believes that healthcare costs are unsustainable (this guy does) and that our entire payment system is driving that result, then the need for new payment systems is clear.  And the challenge, just in terms of thinking about healthcare differently, is enormous!  How do you go to work and not think “I gotta do a lot, test a lot, do lots of procedures.”  How do you begin to shift?  Do you shift?

The compelling answer is “YES.”  Why not act now, before any law (even one dumber than the one that passed a year ago) gets passed, before our society calls the issue a failure and politicians and our neighbors demand a single payer-type system?  Isn’t there a huge opportunity RIGHT NOW?  You betcha.

So where is it?  It’s in management.  The money is in the management.  The data collectors, crunchers and implementers are the new gods in healthcare.  Anyone who can collect data, show what makes clinical and financial sense and then implement it will be more sought after than conflict diamonds.  Show one hospital how to live in that new system, where there are more patients, but less money available, and you retire rich.  Show physicians and other healthcare business people the same thing and lead change.  And since physicians are busy being physicians, except for a handful of physician entrepreneurs, they’re best bet is gonna be to find good partners in “business” who embrace change and see opportunity.


Appeals Court Strikes Down Individual Mandate in Reform Law

Via Modern Healthcare, Joe Carlson

In a 304-page opinion, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Friday struck down the individual insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but allowed the rest of the sweeping law to stand.

In its decision, a divided three-judge panel of the federal appeals court ruled in favor of 26 states that had joined a lawsuit in Pensacola, Fla., which argued the reform law should be struck down because it relies on an unconstitutional expansion of federal power.

The ruling means that the Supreme Court will now have the classic split in the circuit courts that it often relies on when deciding whether to take on a case. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law in June, and the losers in that case filed for permission last month to have their case heard by the Supreme Court.

Read more: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20110812/NEWS/308119930#ixzz1VCtydEqc
?trk=tynt


Marketing: Boldly Going Where No Practice Has Gone Before

By now, every physician has learned about ACOs, Super Groups, IPAs and the like. Virtually every “new” acronym and idea has revealed itself as a retread old one, so at least physicians are getting more comfortable with the new language of healthcare reform. And they are accepting that no one really knows what’s going to happen and how medical practice will ultimately be years from now.
Nearly every physician has asked in the past year or so “What do I do now?” And they have heard responses from every vendor which translates into “Buy my stuff.” Ask an IT person what to do…”Buy my stuff.” Ask an EMR person what to do…”Buy my stuff.” Ask a lawyer….ok enough.

What to do and when to do it in light of feared changes in healthcare is anyone’s guess. There is, however, one remarkably overlooked area of business which physicians have traditionally neglected and which they must focus on now more than ever—marketing.

Do you have a website? Do you know what SEO is and how it works? Do you believe that patients buy what you do and not just who you are? In the internet age when people buy mattresses online, sight unseen, physicians have to begin to learn about marketing.

Though years ago, practicing medicine was clearly a profession, it is now big business. And physicians who thrive will be those who embrace business practices, including marketing. This takes a huge shift in perception since most physicians look at marketing as an expense, not as a good investment.

If you were told that every dollar invested in marketing will yield five dollars in new business would you spend the money? If you were told that buying a stock will result in a five-fold yield over twelve months, would you invest? Physicians have to look as marketing as a good investment rather than simply as a cost. And those that do will likely grow and thrive.


Elephants in the Room

ACOs and other new acronyms have swamped the minds of physicians and healthcarebusiness people alike since the terms were coined. The still new healthcare reform law continues to worry many and challenge others to figure out ways to play the game and win. While we scurry around chasing the regs and the new words and government agencies, while politics keeps moving the ball and shaping the healthcare agenda, the most central issues in healthcare cost/quality debate are not even discussed. It’s as though policy makers and business is saying “Hey, if we keep throwing new regulations at them, maybe they’ll stop asking really tough questions we can’t answer.”

Back in the 80s, the state of Oregon enacted Medicaid reform that took the breath right out of the rest of the country. Remember? The idea that a state would not list ALL medical services to ALL Medicaid patients was considered to be cruel and impolitic at the time. And the national debate about (1) whether healthcare is a right of American citizens, and if so (2) what healthcare services are “in” and which are “out” has grown virtually silent.

Instead, it seems we have entered the area of political intransigence. It appears that getting and staying in political office requires as little change as possible. So, very little seems to be accomplished or even discussed.

So what are the “elephants in the room?” They are the issues of “how much” and “patient accountability.” Though it appears that the issue of whether we Americans are entitled to receive healthcare has been skirted, we are clearly missing any discussion on the issue of how much services. Oregon hit the issue head on, but nationally there appears to be no movement or even discussion of the issue. We don’t know who should get what. We just know we want to reduce the costs (ration).

Virtually every effort to reduce costs so far has involved the use of managed care organizations. The Florida Medicaid program pilot project that began in Broward County in 2006 has produced two clear results—reduced expenditures and huge criticism that managed care has reduced costs solely by reducing access and care itself. Managed care has become the “black hat” that politics won’t pick up. It’s ok for managed care to restrict access and care because it reduces costs, but it is politically impossible to directly address the issue of “how much.” We rely on managed care to do it for us, due to our political inability to tackle the issue, then blame the payers for their (wink wink) bad behavior. If managed care is profiting, it is only because they don’t mind profiting from our unwillingness to take responsibility for the issues they deal with on a daily basis—saying “no.”

The second elephant is the issue of patient accountability. There is none! What is the consequence of patient bad behavior? What consequence is there for refusal to exercise, quit smoking, etc.? None. We pay more. There isn’t a single provision in any federal law that punishes us for making expensive healthcare decisions or that rewards us for making cost saving healthcare decisions.

I liken it to having teenagers. Expectations with no consequences yields a predictable result of no change in behavior. Simple.

These are huge issues to tackle. So many different kinds of people, agendas and ways of seeing the issues. So, we don’t even try. Instead, we “hire” managed care to bear the burden of our failure to address and answer these issues. And we throw complex ideas like metrics and healthcare reform into the market, which only serves to distract us from addressing the root causes of our healthcare challenges.


Sixth Circuit Upholds Constitutionality of Reform Law

In what is being hailed by some as a big victory for the Obama administration, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit June 29th delcared the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate provision a valid exercise of congressional authority under the commerce clause (Thomas More Law Center v. Obama, 6th Cir., No. 10-2388, 6/29/11).

The ruling upheld a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, which refused to enjoin implementation of PPACA after finding the mandate constitutional. The plaintiffs in the case included the Thomas More Law Center, a public interest law firm.

“Today’s ruling is a huge victory for the millions of Americans who are already benefitting from the Affordable Care Act and the millions more who will in the coming years,” according to Eddie Vale, communications director for advocacy group Protect Your Care.

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ACOwatch: Kathleen Sebelius: Keynote Speech From 2nd Annual ACO Summit

6/28/2011: ACOwatch.com 
Remarks as prepared for delivery by Secretary Sebelius on June 27th, 2011, Washington, DC.

“Improving care is clearly the best approach to addressing rising costs – especially compared to recent proposals that would simply cut Medicare and Medicaid, without doing anything to address underlying growth in health care spending.  But it’s also clear that we are not improving fast enough.  So our challenge is to speed it up.”

Read more here: http://acowatch.com/

CMS Changes E-Prescribing Penalty Program

Physicians who are using a qualified e-prescribing program on only 25 Medicare claims over the course of the entire year, can claim a 1% bonus (2% in 2010). The only have to add a single code to the claim to qualify ( G8553). 2011 is the last year physicians can switch to e-prescribing without generating a penalty. In 2012, physicians filing at least the minimum 25 Medicare claims will receive a 1% bonus, but those not doing so will incur a 1% penalty! In 2013, the incentive drops to 0.5%, and the penalty increases to 1.5%. In 2014, and beyond, there will be no incentive, but the penalty will rise to 2% and remain there. Physicians can obtain a FREE e-prescribing system by signing up at http://www.nationalerx.com