Health for life

Here comes the camel nose!

Kudos to JAMA for tackling what the Disease Management Care Blog has been saying for years: now that the Washington DCs camel nose is under the tent, there is no way health insurance coverage - and the care it pays for - isnt going to become politicized.

Thats the bigger issue in this just-published article by Steven Wolf and Doug Campos-Outcalt. Theyre focusing on the political pressure that is being brought to bear on US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). As readers may recall, the Affordable Care Act requires health insurers to fully cover screening services that are deemed effective by the USPSTF. Drs. Wolf and Campos-Outcalt point out that politics rudely intruded on the USPSTFs determination that the evidence supporting mammography for women under age 50 years was lacking. The resulting firestorm not only prompted Congress to not only waive the USPHSTF recommendation, but led some of its members to question the Task Forces integrity.

As academics writing in peer-reviewed journals are wont to do, the authors suggest that this can be remedied by another layer of bureaucracy. They want a new "firewall" committee to be inserted between the "pure" evidence-based USPHSTF and the "political" fisticuffs of the public square.  Itd be the job of this a new entity to insulate USPHSTF by reconciling the proof and the politics prior to the upload of the final recommendations to the mandarins that are running CMS.

"Another committee?" asks the dismayed DMCB. While that would end the Obamacare fiction that health orm was ever going to be truly "based on science," the real Achilles heel of the JAMA proposal is that it literally doubles the opportunity for political meddling. The smartest political operatives will see this as a target-rich environment and naturally seek to influence all of the committees with any jurisdiction over the medical-industrial complex of laboratory medicine, radiological imaging and medical devices.

The DMCB has bad news for its colleagues who thought that they could have the Washington DC "cake" of enlightened government involvement along with the "icing" of scientific independence. Uncle Sams been given a clinical inch and now hell take a political mile to influence clinical guidelines and define standards of care with a one-size-fits-all mentality sprinkled with a healthy dose of cronyism.  Surprise!

The DMCB has an alternative solution: CMS should tread very caully when it comes to insurance design.  Congress needs to reengineer the preventive health part of the ACA. Instead of building new infrastructure to make up for the emerging failures of the old infrastructure, Washington should be pushing benefit design down, not up, to the local level. It can partner with commercial health insurers to assure that the USPSTF recommendations are considered, but with local committee assessments of market demand, provider opinion and community input to determine whats best for its covered population. It should do this while simultaneously promoting the use of shared decision making to help every patient ponder for themselves when testing is in their best interest.
 
Let a thousand flowers bloom.

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Paying for it is a whole new kettle....

Now that the U.S. Supremes have confirmed the Affordable Care Act as the law of the land, the Next Big Step - as the Disease Management Care Blog predicted - is the move from insurance orm to payment orm. While its politically easy to broaden entitlements to cover everyone, figuring out how to pay for it is a whole new kettle of financing fish.

In response, a whos who of Obamacaregineers are stepping up with their Phase II recommendations for payment orm.  While you ponder whether the DMCB summary below is enough or whether you need to follow the link for more detail, ask yourself whats missing......

1. Let public and private payers combine forces to "negotiate" payment rates that aim for global spending targets at a regional level.  Embedded costs for research, training and uncompensated care would be carved out and preserved separately.

 2. Use bundled payment methods for episodes of care that span rehab and post-discharge care, starting out with cardiology and orthopedics. Aim to make this payment approach the rule for 75% of Medicares budget within 10 years.

3. Commoditize medical devices, lab tests and radiology services by forcing suppliers to competitively bid for Medicares business.

4. Encourage tiered insurance products, where consumers can pick progressively lower premiums in exchange for higher out of pocket costs.

5. Leverage state exchanges to ratchet down costs on pain of being "delisted" by forcing them to compete on cost and quality.

6. Simplify administrative costs by establishing a single format for all paper and electronic forms. The latter is the default unless the consumer opts for paper.

7. Make the pricing for medical services public and outlaw gag clauses.

8. Allow non-physicians to take advantage of scope-of-practice  laws to practice medicine autonomously.

9. Close the provider self-erral loopholes that allow docs to provide "in house ancillary services," unless its under a global cap.

10 Start all the above with the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).

11. Use the "safe harbor" of practice guidelines to protect docs against allegations of medical malpractice.

Whats missing is the usual emphasis on primary care and, in particular, the patient centered medical home.  While it could be argued that global targets and bundled payment methodologies will drive the inclusion of higher value/lower cost non-specialists, the DMCB is shocked, shocked that the experts and editors missed usual nod to primary care.

The DMCB will also point out that the proposal is rich in expert councils (to set spending targets), programs (as in Medicare Acute Care Episode to define the bundling), panels (for the competitive bidding and guidelines) task forces (for the administrative simplification), commissioners (to assure transparency) and, last but not least lawyers (expanding Stark to ban self-erral).  Plato, the champion of Philosopher Kings, would be proud. 

In the meantime, Ayn Rand is rolling in her grave.

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