First Edition: September 23, 2015
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
Kaiser Health News:
HHS Vows Push To Enroll More Uninsured In Obamacare This Fall
Affordability continues to be a challenge, she said. Even with the law’s financial help to pay for premiums and out-of-pocket costs, some uninsured may simply not have the money to pay for coverage. Almost 40 percent of the uninsured who qualify for marketplace coverage earn between 139 and 250 percent of the poverty level, about $30,000 to $60,000 a year for a family of four, Burwell said. Nearly 60 percent of the uninsured are either confused about how the tax credits work or don’t know that they are available, and about half of the uninsured have less than $100 in savings, Burwell said. (Carey, 9/22)
Kaiser Health News:
Employers Shift More Health Costs To Workers, Survey Finds
Forty-six percent of covered workers have a deductible of at least $1,000 this year for single coverage as employers shift to “consumer-directed” plans that give members incentives to seek less-costly care. Deductibles are more than $2,000 for single coverage for almost a fifth of covered workers. (Hancock, 9/22)
Kaiser Health News:
IOM: Teamwork Key To Reducing Medical Diagnostic Errors
Almost every American will experience a medical diagnostic error, but the problem has taken a back seat to other patient safety concerns, an influential panel said in a report out today calling for widespread changes. Diagnostic errors — defined as inaccurate or delayed diagnoses — account for an estimated 10 percent of patient deaths, hundreds of thousands of adverse events in hospitals each year and are a leading cause of paid medical malpractice claims, a blue ribbon panel of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) said in its report. (Appleby, 9/22)
Kaiser Health News:
Stemming The Cycle Of Toxic Stress – For The Kids’ Sake
Samantha McVey brought her 4-month-old daughter, Ruby, to The Children’s Clinic for a routine check-up and vaccinations. But within minutes of sitting down with Dr. R.J. Gillespie, McVey was describing her turbulent childhood with a drug-addicted father who spent time in prison. “How do you think that affects your parenting now?” Gillespie asked. "I don’t want my kids to have to go through that," said McVey, 23. (Gorman, 9/23)
The Wall Street Journal:
HHS Secretary Says Coming Sign-Up Season Will Be Toughest Yet Under Health Law
Top Obama administration officials said Tuesday they were anticipating their toughest sign-up season yet for insurance coverage under the health law. Officials aim to make a dent in the number Americans still uninsured in the law’s third enrollment period. They are eyeing about 10.5 million people who could buy coverage through HealthCare.gov or state sites, often with federal subsidies to offset premiums, but who have resisted signing up as the law rolled out. (Radnofsky, 9/22)
The New York Times:
U.S. Targets Four States In Effort To Enroll The Uninsured
With the third open enrollment season under the Affordable Care Act beginning in about six weeks, Obama administration officials said Tuesday that they would focus efforts to expand health coverage to the uninsured in Dallas, Houston, northern New Jersey, Chicago and Miami. (Pear, 9/22)
USA Today:
Feds Say Nearly 18 Million Now Insured Through Obamacare
Citing just-released federal data, Burwell said the 17.6 million people who gained coverage included children up to age 26 who were able to stay on their parents plans, the expansion of Medicaid and the availability of the state and federal insurance exchanges. Speaking at Howard University in Washington — one of the historically black colleges and universities — Burwell also noted that the uninsured rate dropped 10.3% among African-Americans as 2.6 million gained coverage. Four million Latino adults also became insured, representing an 11.5% decline in the rate of uninsured Hispanics. (O'Donnell, 9/22)
The Washington Post:
Third ACA Sign-Up Period To Focus On 10.5 Million Uninsured Americans
According to estimates released Tuesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, that is the size of a group — disproportionately young adults or minorities — that lacks health coverage and qualifies to buy health plans through insurance exchanges created by the law. (Goldstein, 9/22)
The Associated Press:
Uninsured Are Getting Harder To Sign Up
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell on Tuesday gave three reasons why the 2016 sign-up season will be a bigger challenge: The most eager customers have already signed up; many of the remaining uninsured are young adults who may not see the value of coverage and those who remain are juggling tight household budgets. (9/22)
The Wall Street Journal:
Audit Finds Deficiencies In New York State’s Health-Insurance Exchange
Some controls New York state relied on to make sure people were eligible for health-insurance coverage and subsidies on the state-run exchange were deficient, potentially letting some consumers get benefits they weren’t entitled to, an audit found. The inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services reviewed a sample of 45 randomly selected applicants and analyzed their supporting documentation to see if the New York exchange followed federal regulations in determining eligibility for coverage and subsidies. (Armour, 9/23)
The Wall Street Journal:
Spending Bill Is On Track, But Shutdown Threat Persists
Conservatives in both chambers have been wrestling for weeks with how to respond to videos released by an antiabortion group showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing procuring fetal tissue from abortions to provide to third parties for medical research. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) began setting up the votes expected to create a path for a spending bill to clear Senate procedures before the government runs out of money. But the bigger question is whether House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) will be willing to go along with a plan unpopular among many of his most conservative lawmakers, who say the must-pass spending bill should strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood. (Peterson and Armour, 9/22)
Politico:
GOP Freshmen Urge Party To Avoid Shutdown
Nearly a dozen House GOP freshmen are urging their colleagues to avoid a government shutdown next week and pass a short-term spending bill a week before federal agencies run out of money. In a “Dear Colleague” letter, eleven new Republicans urged their fellow GOP lawmakers to pass a continuing resolution by Sept. 30 - and not hold any stopgap spending bill hostage over funding for Planned Parenthood. (Bresnahan and Bade, 9/23)
Los Angeles Times:
McConnell Acts To Mollify Senate Conservatives, Avert Government Shutdown
When Republicans took control of Congress, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed there would be no federal government shutdown on his watch. Now, with barely a week to go before the Sept. 30 fiscal-year deadline, the GOP leader is in a familiar struggle to prevent that outcome. (Mascaro, 9/22)
The Wall Street Journal:
Senate Blocks Bill Banning Abortions After 20 Weeks Of Pregnancy
The Senate on Tuesday blocked a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, thwarting one component of a Republican antiabortion push sparked by the release of undercover videos. A group of 40 members of the Democratic caucus and 2 Republicans defeated the 20-week abortion ban in a 54-42 procedural vote Tuesday. The measure, already approved by the House in May, needed 60 votes to advance in the Senate. But the vote didn’t douse the abortion debate still roiling both chambers of Congress. (Peterson and Armour, 9/22)
Politico:
Senate Blocks 20-Week Abortion Ban
The vote on the "fetal pain" bill was 54-42, short of the 60 needed to move ahead. Two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois — and three Democrats — Sens. Joe Manchin (W.V.), Bob Casey (Penn.) and Donnelly (Ind.)—crossed party lines. None of those five votes were surprising, given the lawmakers' stance on abortion and their statements about this legislation. Four senators, including Lisa Murkowski (R-Ak.) Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) Parry Murray (D-Wash.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) did not vote. (Ehley, 9/22)
The New York Times:
Health Insurers Seeking Mergers Play Down Antitrust Concerns
The chief executives of two of the nation’s largest health insurance companies told skeptical senators on Tuesday that consumers would benefit if the federal government approved their plans to acquire two other big insurers. But Consumers Union, a consumer advocacy group, expressed doubts about the deals, and Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, objected to the mergers, saying they could cause harm by reducing competition. (Pear, 9/22)
The Associated Press:
CEOs Of Aetna, Anthem Make Case For Health Insurance Mergers
Leaders of two major health insurers planning multibillion dollar acquisitions made their case to Congress that bigger can mean better in their industry, but concerns are being raised in Washington about how these deals will affect consumers and competition. Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurer Anthem plans to buy Cigna for $48 billion, and rival Aetna is looking to acquire Medicare Advantage coverage provider Humana for about $35 billion in a wave of consolidation that swept through the industry this summer. The deals came under scrutiny Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing. (9/22)
The Wall Street Journal:
Health Insurers Aetna, Anthem Defend Deals, Say Markets Will Stay Competitive
The chief executives of Aetna Inc. and Anthem Inc. defended their merger deals before a Senate subcommittee, facing sharply critical testimony that raised questions about the impact of health-insurance consolidation. Aetna is seeking to acquire Humana Inc., in a $34 billion transaction focused largely on the private Medicare plans known as Medicare Advantage. Anthem aims to take over Cigna Corp. in a $48 billion deal. The two deals together would shrink the top five U.S. health insurers to a big three, each with annual revenue of more than $100 billion. The third player would be UnitedHealth Group Inc. (Wilde Mathews and Kendall, 9/22)
Los Angeles Times:
Health Insurance CEOs Vow Mergers Won't Make Marketplace Less Competitive
Proposed mega-mergers between health insurance giants prompted by the Affordable Care Act won’t harm the level of competition in the market, two chief executives pledged Tuesday to skeptical lawmakers. The recent plans by Aetna Inc. to acquire Humana Inc., and by Anthem Inc. to buy Cigna Corp., have raised concerns over the economic impact that such mergers, which would eliminate two of the five largest insurers to create three companies, would have on consumers. The Justice Department is investigating the deals. (Howard, 9/22)
The New York Times:
Hillary Clinton Proposes Cap On Patients’ Drug Costs As Bernie Sanders Pushes His Plan
With voter fury rising over the high cost of prescription drugs, Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed capping out-of-pocket drug expenses at $250 a month on Tuesday while a rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, extolled his own plan and long record for pushing to lower drug costs. While Republican candidates for the White House want to repeal the Affordable Care Act and generally oppose interfering with the drug industry, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders are competing fiercely with each other to press for greater competition and new regulations to rein in pharmaceutical companies. (Healy and Sanger-Katz, 9/22)
The Wall Street Journal:
Hillary Clinton Focuses On Middle-Class Concerns About Health-Care Costs
Hillary Clinton, laying out her health-care agenda, is trying to shift the national debate surrounding the divisive Affordable Care Act to focus squarely on rising out-of-pocket costs of care. In Iowa on Tuesday, the Democratic presidential contender put forth ideas to control prescription-drug spending. On Wednesday, she’ll talk about other consumer costs, such as high copayments and deductibles. (Meckler, 9/22)
The Wall Street Journal Washington Wire:
Health Lobbyists Aren’t Cheering Hillary Clinton’s Prescription Drug Plan
Hillary Clinton‘s prescription drug proposals are likely to get mixed reactions from the insurance lobby — and drugmakers already have come out swinging. The new head of the America’s Health Insurance Plans industry group said in an interview shortly before Mrs. Clinton’s plans were released that insurers have identified pharmaceutical price surges as a key threat to health costs, and that they plan to continue fighting on the issue. (Radnofsky, 9/22)
USA Today:
Hillary Clinton Unveils Plan To Lower Prescription Drug Costs
Hillary Clinton on Tuesday unveiled a plan to rein in prescription drug costs by forcing pharmaceutical companies to reinvest their profits into research and allowing for more generic and imported drugs. The proposal, which she outlined in a speech in Iowa on Tuesday, would also allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug costs and cap out-of-pocket expenses for individuals with chronic health problems. (Przybyla, 9/22)
The Washington Post:
Clinton Proposes Cap On Out-Of-Pocket Costs For Prescription Drugs
Clinton’s plan has several moving parts, some aimed at directly curbing profits of pharmaceutical companies and others to give the government a stronger role in constraining drug prices or making lower-priced medicine more available. She would allow Americans to reimport U.S.-made drugs from countries where they tend to be sold at lower prices. She would also allow the Medicare program to negotiate prices with drug manufactures. (Gearan and Goldstein, 9/22)
The Washington Post's Wonkblog:
The One Thing You Need To Know About Clinton’s War On High Drug Prices
It's almost an afterthought, but the last two bullet points dangling at the end of Hillary Rodham Clinton's manifesto against high drug prices are its linchpin: She wants to allow the government to flex its muscle and negotiate lower drug prices from pharmaceutical companies. (Johnson, 9/22)
Politico:
Biden Surges In New Bloomberg Poll
Vice President Joe Biden surged in a new national Bloomberg Politics poll of Democratic voters and independent voters leaning toward the Democratic Party released Wednesday morning, even though he has not announced his intentions for the presidency. Hillary Clinton earned a plurality of 33 percent, followed by Biden at 25 percent and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at 24 percent. Other candidates are polling within the margin of error. (Gass, 9/23)
The New York Times:
Health Insurance Deductibles Outpacing Wage Increases, Study Finds
It may not seem like much — just an extra hundred dollars or so a year. But the steady upward creep in health insurance deductibles has easily outpaced the average increase in a worker’s wages over the last five years, according to a new analysis released on Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Abelson, 9/22)
NPR:
Rising Health Deductibles Take Bigger Bite Out Of Family Budgets
Health care costs continue to rise, and workers are shouldering more of the burden. The big reason? Skyrocketing deductibles. More companies are adding deductibles to the insurance plans they offer their employees. And for those who already had to pay deductibles, the out-of-pocket outlays are growing. (Kodjak, 9/22)
Los Angeles Times:
Healthcare Costs Rise Again, And The Burden Continues To Shift To Workers
American workers saw their out-of-pocket medical costs jump again this year, as the average deductible for an employer-provided health plan surged nearly 9% in 2015 to more than $1,000, a major new survey of employers shows. The annual increase, though lower than in previous years', far outpaced wage growth and overall inflation and marked the continuation of a trend that in just a few years has dramatically shifted healthcare costs to workers. (Levey, 9/22)
The Wall Street Journal:
Employer Health Coverage For Family Tops $17,000
The average cost of employer health coverage passed $17,000 for a family plan this year, despite continued muted growth on a percentage basis, according to a major survey. The average annual cost of an employer family plan rose 4%, to $17,545, from $16,834 last year, according to the annual poll of employers performed by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation along with the Health Research & Educational Trust, a nonprofit affiliated with the American Hospital Association. The share of the 2015 family-plan premium borne by employees was 29% of the total, the same percentage as last year. (Wilde Mathews, 9/22)
The Associated Press:
Study Shows Employers Shifting More Medical Costs To Workers
[Kaiser Family Foundation CEO Drew] Altman calls this cost shift a “quiet revolution in health insurance,” obscured in recent years by the health care overhaul’s coverage expansion for people who don’t have coverage through work. “It’s funny, we used to think of $1,000 as a very high deductible, and now it’s almost commonplace,” he said. (Murphy, 9/22)
The Washington Post:
Turing CEO Martin Shkreli Promises To Lower Price Of Drug Previously Hiked 4,000 Percent — But Would Not Say By How Much
Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli announced Tuesday night that the company will roll back the price of the drug Daraprim, but did not commit to a specific price. The company had faced intense criticism in recent days from patient advocacy groups, doctors, politicians -- as well as from within its own industry -- after it raised the price of the 62-year-old drug from $18 to $750 or more than 4,000 percent after it purchased rights to the drug last month. The medication is a critical treatment for a parasitic infection that can be fatal to those with compromised immune systems due to conditions like AIDS/HIV and cancer. (Cha, 9/22)
The Washington Post:
Most Americans Will Get A Wrong Or Late Diagnosis At Least Once In Their Lives
This critical type of health-care error is far more common than medication mistakes or surgery on the wrong patient or body part. But until now, diagnostic errors have been a relatively understudied and unmeasured area of patient safety. Much of patient safety is focused on errors in hospitals, not mistakes in diagnoses that take place in doctors’ offices, surgical centers and other outpatient facilities. (Sun, 9/22)
The Associated Press:
Whistleblowers: VA Inspector General A 'Joke'
The Department of Veterans Affairs continues to retaliate against whistleblowers despite repeated pledges to stop punishing those who speak up, a group of employees said Tuesday. One called the department's office of inspector general a "joke."
VA whistleblowers from across the country told a Senate committee that the department has failed to hold supervisors accountable more than a year after a scandal that broke over chronic delays for veterans seeking medical care and falsified records covering up the waits. (Daly, 9/23)
The Washington Post:
VA Culture Of Reprisals Against Whistleblowers Remains Strong After Scandal
But testimony at a Senate hearing Tuesday demonstrated that despite vigorous efforts from the new VA leadership, the department remains a dangerous place for whistleblowers who report wrong doing. ... Christopher Kirkpatrick was a VA psychologist and whistleblower who complained about over-medication of patients at the Tomah VA Medical Center in Wisconsin when he committed suicide in 2009. His brother, Sean Kirkpatrick, spoke for him at the hearing. “Our brother felt helpless and hopeless with the obstacles he encountered at the Tomah VA Medical Center,” Sean Kirkpatrick told the hearing. “He wanted to improve the quality of care for our nation’s veterans through holistic options and continuously questioned the over-medication practices which hindered his ability to treat his patients. (Davidson, 9/22)
The Associated Press:
Planned Parenthood, Alabama In Court Over Medicaid Money
Planned Parenthood went to court Tuesday and asked a federal judge to prevent Gov. Robert Bentley’s administration from ending Medicaid payments to the organization’s two Alabama clinics. (Chandler, 9/22)
The Wall Street Journal:
Former CEO Of Bankrupt Chicago Hospital Admits To Perjury
The former owner of a bankrupt Chicago hospital that was at the center of a federal health-care fraud probe has admitted to hiding millions in an offshore account to evade more than $188 million in civil penalties. Peter George Rogan, 69 years old, of Canada, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Chicago federal court to lying about the account in the Bahamas. Under the terms of the plea deal, Mr. Rogan faces a year to 21 months in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 14. (Armental, 9/22)
Los Angeles Times:
How The New King Hospital Hopes To Put Its 'Killer King' Image 'Far Behind'
At the old King/Drew Medical Center, guards used Tasers on psychiatric patients. Trauma surgeons mistakenly slit the throat of an 18-year-old shooting victim and a woman contracted HIV after she was infused with virus-infected blood. The public facility was forced to shut down in 2007, in large part because of serious breakdowns in patient care. Now a new hospital, known as Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, has opened in its place and administrators say that they aim for it to be one of the best facilities on the West Coast. (Karlamangla, 9/22)