30 Jun 2017 BPC Action Health Care Resources in Health
BPC Action wishes Members of Congress and congressional staff a safe and happy 4th of July! As Congress enters recess with health care still the major pending item of business, please check out our recess reading round up:
Health Insurance Market Stabilization
The Trump Administration has continued to pay health insurance cost-sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies on a month-to-month basis without guarantee of continued payment into the future. Continued payment this year and through at least plan year 2019 will be critical for ensuring health insurance market stability, and protecting the consumers who rely upon this help to reduce their deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses. To learn more about these payments, how they are at risk, and what happens if they are not paid, check out our CSR Deep Dive blogs from BPC senior policy analyst Peter Fise.
Medicaid
In case you missed it, tune into this insightful discussion on Balancing Coverage and Cost in Medicaid, featuring: Gail Wilensky, economist and senior fellow at Project HOPE and former administrator at the Health Care Financing Administration (now CMS); Cindy Mann, partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP and former Director of the CMS Center for Medicaid;Henry Claypool, Policy Director, Community Living Policy Center, UCSF; Hemi Tewarson, Division Director, National Governors Association Center for Best Practices’ Health Division; and Detroit Medical Center CEO Tony Tedeschi, M.D. Panelists discussed the challenges states face in managing their Medicaid programs, and how legislation before the U.S. Senate could impact states and Medicaid recipients. One major area of common ground was recognition of the complexities around caring for individuals dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, and the need for payment and delivery innovations to provide better, more integrated care for these patients. For more on this topic, see BPC’s report on Improving Care for Individuals Dually Eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. BPC health leaders provide more recommendations for health care delivery and payment reform that seeks to improve value – better care at lower costs – in our health care system, through this Health Affairs blog series.
BPC Health System Executive Council
As the health care sector braces for the possibility of uncertain changes, BPC has brought together top executives from some of the nation’s leading hospital and health systems to help guide BPC’s Future of Health Care initiative. This new Health System Executive Council will advise BPC’s policy work to ensure the expertise and experience of health care providers is taken into account. In addition, the council will help inform the activities of BPC’s larger health program, including its work on health insurance, health innovation, and prevention. Currently, the council includes the following chief executives: Barry Arbuckle of MemorialCare Health System; Lloyd Dean of Dignity Health; David Feinberg of Geisinger Health; Trevor Fetter of Tenet Healthcare; Robert Henkel of Ascension; and Kim Horn of Kaiser Permanente. As congressional offices analyze policy changes and impacts of the Senate health care bill, this group of senior leaders is poised to serve as a resource. For more information, please contact Ashley Ridlon, Senior Manager at BPC Action at 202-204-2204 or aridlon@bpcaction.org.
BPC Action Voices of Care
BPC Action is traveling around the country asking health care leaders about their priorities for reforming our health care system. To elevate their perspectives, BPC Action launched the Voices of Care Project. This national 5-min podcast series, laid out on the U.S. map, features stories and insights from health care leaders across the nation based on their experiences. With this project, BPC Action intends to serve as a resource to policymakers and change agents on the diverse needs of those that provide, pay for, and access health care across our country. Several common themes, which have broad political appeal, have emerged throughout the interviews:
- Health care should be less politicized;
- The need to reduce health care costs and focus on affordability;
- The importance of continuing to move to paying for value in health care;
- The potential for local success stories to be replicated in other areas of the country;
- The need to balance issues of access, quality, and affordability of health insurance coverage.
To hear more from health care leaders, please listen to these 5-minute Voices of Care podcasts, and stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.
Finally, in case you missed it, yesterday’s statement by Bipartisan Policy Center Health Leaders
“Republicans and Democrats maintain significant, principled and substantive differences over the goals and structure of America’s future health care system. But we also believe, within these differences are some fundamental truths: we all want to lower the cost of health care coverage, reduce the burden on families, and be assured that the quality of care provided is the best it can be… The time to set aside party politics and find common ground on these challenging issues is before Congress upon their return from the Independence Day recess. A failure to resolve policy differences will only lead to further instability in the health care system and neither benefit the American public nor our democratic process.”
