Introducing the 2015-2016 Petrie-Flom Student Fellows

The Petrie-Flom Center is pleased to welcome our new 2015-2016 Student Fellows. In the coming year, each fellow will pursue independent scholarly projects related to health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics under the mentorship of Center faculty and fellows. They will also be regular contributors here at Bill of Health on issues related to their research. Read More

Medicare Coverage for Sex Change Therapy: What’s Next

By Matthew Lawrence and Elizabeth Guo

Last month Medicare’s policy on coverage for sex change therapy changed somewhat. (See Matt’s earlier post here.) Specifically, Medicare’s Departmental Appeals Board invalidated the long-standing National Coverage Determination that dubbed sex change therapy to be non-covered, per se.

Co-blogger Elizabeth Guo and I have done some further digging on this issue and put together two posts answering some questions left open by Medicare’s decision and the news coverage surrounding it.  In this post we discuss next steps: what the change in coverage policy means for Medicare beneficiaries who want coverage for sex change therapy, and what, if any, additional developments are likely to follow.  In a companion post, we will be discussing the somewhat unusual process that was used to make this policy change.

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Is Medicare’s System for Challenging Coverage Determinations Unintentionally Unfair?

On March 25, Susan Jaffe published a blog post in the New York Times about Medicare’s recent change to cover skilled therapy (e.g. physical therapy, nursing care) where it is “reasonable and necessary” maintain a patient’s condition and to prevent deterioration, even when it is not likely that the patient will improve. Jaffe notes that the revisions will likely have a substantial impact on thousands of Medicare beneficiaries even though the change has been largely unnoticed.

The revision highlights a potential problem with the system in place for challenging Medicare coverage. The revision itself is unremarkable, reflecting what national Medicare policies professed, but what local contractors sometimes ignored. What is remarkable is the time it took for Medicare to make the revision, from when the controversy appeared to when Medicare posted the change in its manuals. This delay is problematic because it reflects a dichotomy in how coverage decisions are challenged and changed under Medicare – due not to medical necessity but to political and financial circumstances beyond patient control.

Constituents can change Medicare coverage policies through two processes. One is through the litigation system. Judges can overturn Medicare coverage decisions after patients have exhausted Medicare’s internal adjudication process. Yet, litigation can take years and judges usually defer to Medicare’s judgment. National Coverage Determinations (NCDs) provide an alternative under which constituents can encourage Medicare to reconsider or overturn a prior coverage decision. NCDs supersede Local Coverage Determinations (LCDs) – coverage decisions that affect a region of the United States. When Medicare determines that the LCDs for a specific technology or service are “inconsistent or conflict with each other to the detriment of Medicare beneficiaries,” Medicare can decide to issue an NCD to provide uniform coverage.

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Introducing Student Contributor Elizabeth Guo

Elizabeth Guo is a first year student in the JD/MPH Program at Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Public Health. Her interests lie at the intersection of law, health care reimbursement, and biopharmaceutical regulation. Elizabeth graduated from Harvard University with a BA in social studies, focusing on the bioethics of assisted reproduction in China. Prior to law school, she was a senior associate at Avalere Health, working with life science clients on a range of health policy topics, including Medicare coverage and reimbursement, biosimilar regulation, and healthcare quality programs. Elizabeth is a student editor of the Journal of Law and Technology and a member of the Mississippi Delta Project’s Food Policy Initiative.

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