Democratic and Republican governors know that rising health care costs are increasingly restricting spending on other state priorities. Paul Howard, Director of Health Policy at the Manhattan Institute, outlines five strategies that innovative governors can use to help transform state health care markets: 1. Incorporate reference pricing for common procedures and tests into state benefit designs, 2. Ban anti-tiering provisions, 3. Drive price transparency by setting up an all-payer claims database, 4. Expand access to direct primary care, and 5. Repeal regulations that hamstring competition, such as certificate of need laws and prohibitions on the corporate practice of medicine.
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Even progressives are turning against Obamacare as health care costs and premiums skyrocket.
Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, said Wednesday there was strong support for a single-payer system on the Democratic platform committee, and one reason is that progressives blame the Affordable Care Act for rising costs.
“In a world in which people are facing rising costs and they kind of hear the ACA is over here, they’re blaming the ACA for their rising costs,” Ms. Tanden said during a panel discussion at the Democratic National Convention.
“Even progressives who fought for the ACA five years ago are really questioning the affordability issue, and it’s making them move in really dramatic ways,” she said. “Part of this lack of support of the ACA is from the left, not just the right.”
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Healthcare policy got remarkably little discussion during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, despite repeated nods to the issue from Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders. Here’s why.
No one wanted to talk about the costs, regulations, and other tough tradeoffs that would be involved in further expanding insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, improving affordability for consumers, curbing medical spending growth, and reducing prescription drug costs.
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Many of the initial reports of premium increases for 2017 have been based on anecdotal examples or averages across insurers. This Kaiser Family Foundation brief takes a different approach, presenting an early analysis of changes in insurer participation and premiums for the lowest-cost and second-lowest silver marketplace plans in major cities in 16 states plus the District of Columbia where complete data on rates is publicly available for all insurers. Based on insurer rate requests, the cost of the second-lowest silver plan in these cities will increase by a weighted average of 9% in 2017.
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Anthem fought back against an Obama administration antitrust lawsuit on Wednesday by conditioning its expansion in the struggling Obamacare market to approval of its acquisition of Cigna. The company plans to add nine states to its Obamacare participation if the deal goes through, company officials said on a call with investors. Last week, the Department of Justice sued to block Anthem’s proposed $54 billion acquisition of Cigna and also filed suit against Aetna’s planned $37 billion takeover of Humana.
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After six years of rock-solid defense, top healthcare advocates in the Democratic Party are now willing to acknowledge that the Affordable Care Act has fallen flat on affordability.
At the Democratic National Convention this week, some of Hillary Clinton’s closest allies on healthcare are setting her up for a major battle to lower the cost of care, an issue they said needs to top her agenda as president.
“Healthcare costs, I really see as the next generation of healthcare reform,” Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, said at a luncheon in downtown Philadelphia on Wednesday.
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Anthem Inc., the No. 2 U.S. health insurer by membership, said medical spending rose in the second quarter, driven by higher costs from the insurer’s Affordable Care Act plans and Medicaid business.
The shares dropped as much as 4.1 percent, the biggest intraday decline since April 27, and were down 0.5 percent to $136.95 at 9:55 a.m. Anthem said it spent 84.2 cents of every premium dollar on medical care, up from 82.1 cents a year earlier.
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Two scholars at the renowned Brookings Institution, Loren Adler and Paul Ginsburg, have published an analysis finding that “average premiums in the individual market actually dropped significantly upon implementation of the ACA [Affordable Care Act].” This contrasts with a plethora of evidence, including a rigorous 2014 Brookings study, showing that the ACA significantly increased premiums. In this post, I discuss methodological concerns with the Adler and Ginsburg approach as well as evidence that leads most scholars to reach a very different conclusion.
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Anthem Inc. said it is now projecting losses on its Affordable Care Act plans this year, a turnaround for a major insurer that had maintained a relatively optimistic tone about that business.
Anthem said it now believed it would see a “mid-single-digit” operating margin loss on its ACA plans in 2016, due to higher-than-expected medical costs. It expects better results next year, because it is seeking substantial premium increases.
Anthem’s financial performance on ACA plans had previously been a relative bright spot among major insurers, many of which continue to struggle.
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Health insurer Anthem Inc on Wednesday vowed to fight U.S. government efforts to block its planned acquisition of Cigna Corp and said it expects to lose money this year on its business selling individual health coverage under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law.
Anthem has argued that its planned $45-billion purchase of Cigna will give it greater leverage to negotiate better prices from healthcare providers and pass on those savings to consumers, including those signing up for “Obamacare” plans on public insurance exchanges.
“To be clear, our board and executive leadership team at Anthem is fully committed to challenging the (U.S. Department of Justice’s) decision in court,” Chief Executive Joseph Swedish told analysts on a conference call.
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