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The Spencer’s Consumer-Driven Health Report is a summary of the week's news items posted in the WHAT'S NEW pages of Spencer’s Consumer-Driven Health Report Online. For questions regarding this email service, contact Customer Service at (800)449-9525.
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On March 10, the Senate agreed to a series of tax extension provisions, including an extension of the COBRA subsidy provision through the end of 2010 (see Report 329.1.-13). By a vote of 62 to 36, the Senate passed H.R. 4213, the American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act of 2010. Because the Senate made numerous changes to the bill, which already had been passed by the House of Representatives, the House must now consider those changes before the bill can be signed by President Barack Obama…
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March 18 is the next deadline for health care reform, according President Barack Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs. At a March 4 press briefing, Mr. Gibbs noted that Mr. Obama is leaving for a trip to Indonesia on March 18, and Mr. Gibbs said, “I believe that, based on conversations that I’ve had in the building, that we’re on schedule to get this through the House by then.”…
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The Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) has posted on its Web site the Spanish version of the Model Notice for Employers to Use to advise employees of the potential for eligibility for premium assistance under state Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)…
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How President Barack Obama’s recent health reform proposal (see News, March 1, 2010, Obama Health Reform Proposal Modifies Senate-Passed Legislation) would increase the Medicare payroll tax is outlined in a recent analysis in Kaiser Health News…
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Virginia is poised to become the first state to make illegal an individual mandate for health insurance. On March 10, the House of Delegates passed H.B. 10, a bill, previously passed in the state Senate, outlawing individual mandates. Gov. Bob McDonnell has indicated he will sign the legislation…
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As the health reform legislation has stalled in Congress, “the original motivation and rationale for the reforms appears to have become obscured, as have an understanding of what the proposals would do and who would benefit from them,” according to a new paper from the Urban Institute. In The Biggest Losers, Health Edition: Who Would Be Hurt the Most by a Failure to Enact Comprehensive Reforms?, Linda J. Blumberg, a senior fellow in the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center, examined the groups with the most to lose should comprehensive health reform fail to pass. Those groups, primarily based on 2008 statistics, include the following segments:…
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“Changing Medicare’s payment methods is essential to improving efficiency and value in health-care delivery,” the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) concluded in its annual Report to Congress—Medicare Payment Policy. “But such payment reform is unlikely to happen—or at least will not happen as quickly—without steady pressure on the level of prices paid by Medicare as well as attention to the relative values assigned to different services.” According to MedPAC, bundling payments around an “incident of care,” including payment for inpatient hospital, physician, and care after hospital discharge requiring service provider coordination would be an effective way to improve efficiency and value…
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Plan sponsors reported having little leverage to negotiate price concessions from manufacturers for most specialty tier-eligible drugs under Medicare Part D when there were few or no other treatment options, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office…
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In testimony before the Senate subcommittee on federal financial management, government information, federal services, and international security from the Homeland Security and the Governmental Affairs Committee, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported on the progress of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in auditing Medicare Part D prescription drug plan sponsors’ fraud, waste, and abuse programs. In its testimony, CMS Oversight of Part D Sponsors’ Fraud and Abuse Programs Has Been Limited, but CMS Plans Oversight Expansion, (GAO-10-481T), the GAO focused on the extent of CMS’s oversight of Part D sponsors’ fraud and abuse programs, including its past efforts and planned oversight activities…
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The Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans, also known as the ERISA Advisory Council, will hold its first meeting of 2010 on March 22 in Washington, D.C., at the U.S. Department of Labor, 200 Constitution Avenue NW, Room S-2508, from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. EDT. This will be the 150th open meeting of the council…
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