Tag: ACA

Medical Malpractice, the Affordable Care Act and State Provider Shield Laws: More Myth than Necessity?

kvantassel 1 Comment

By Mary Ann Chirba and Alice A. Noble

Given the ambitions and reach of the Affordable Care Act, confusion about its intended and inadvertent impact is inevitable. Since its enactment in 2010, the ACA has raised legitimate and less grounded concerns among various stakeholders ranging from individuals and employers facing coverage mandates to States deciding whether and how to implement the Act’s Medicaid expansions. One item has received far less attention even though it weighs heavily on any provider engaged in the clinical practice of medicine: the ACA’s impact on medical malpractice liability. The Act does little to address medical malpractice head on. Nevertheless, physicians and other providers, the states and even some members of Congress have expressed concern that the Act will increase a provider’s exposure to medical malpractice liability.

In response, the American Medical Association has drafted model legislation to shield providers from newly created malpractice claims resulting from the ACA. It would prevent malpractice claimants from using federal or state practice guidelines, quality measures, reimbursement criteria and the like to establish or define the standard of care without expert testimony. In Congress, a version of this model, H.R. 1473, was introduced in the House of Representatives in 2012, and again in April of 2013 [link: https://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1473/cosponsors].

In April, the governor of Georgia signed H.B. 499 [link: https://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/en-US/display/20132014/HB/499] into law, becoming the first state to pass legislation based on the AMA model act.

This came on the heels of a Medical Association of Georgia Advocacy Brief [link: https://www.mag.org/sites/default/files/downloads/issue-brief-provider-shield2-2013.pdf] stating that the ACA’s “guidelines” concerning health care quality measures; payment adjustments; hospital value-based purchasing; and value-based payment modifiers “will raise [the medical malpractice] standard to unreasonable levels by exposing physicians to a number of new liabilities….” [Emphasis added]

It is too early to tell whether states will follow Georgia’s lead and enact similar measures. What is clear is that such “standard of care protection” or “provider liability shield” legislation raises interesting questions about the ACA’s impact on state medical malpractice law.

Read More

The Salience of Numbers: W-2s Now List Cost of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance

kbooth Leave a comment

By: Katie Booth

Beginning in 2013, W-2s for firms who file at least 250 W-2 forms will list the amount of money that employers and employees spend on health insurance premiums. As the New York Times reports, “[t]o some, it will be a surprise, perhaps even a shock.” Many people insured through their employer have no idea how much health insurance actually costs. The W-2 provision will change this, providing a yearly reminder about how much employer compensation goes into health insurance rather than wages. This gives employees exactly one salient number about health care: the yearly cost of their employer-provided health insurance.

More information for consumers about the cost of health care is a good thing, but making the cost of health insurance more salient may have some unintended consequences. Employees will be better able to compare the benefits of jobs with higher salaries but no health insurance to jobs with lower salaries and health insurance. This may lead employees to opt for lower salary jobs with health insurance, which could help decrease the number of employees who seek government-subsidized health insurance. The W-2 provision could, however, have the opposite effect. Now that employees can easily compare the cost of employer-sponsored insurance to government-subsidized insurance, employees eligible for government-subsidized health insurance may buy insurance through an exchange and then opt for a higher-paying job that does not offer insurance. Employers may be willing to pay the tax penalty, which is much less than the cost of insurance.

Read More

Maintenance of Effort in Maine

koutterson Leave a comment

After the NFIB decision in June, Maine tried to expand Justice Roberts’ remedy to also make the “maintenance of effort” provision optional for states. Maine was unsuccessful in the First Circuit with the argument, for procedural reasons.  Prior coverage here.

The Obama Administration is sticking to the letter of the law, and announced Tuesday that it is refusing to allow cuts for Medicaid beneficiaries at or below 133% (138% after the 5% income disregard) of FPL in Maine.

Maine has not yet announced whether it will take the case back to the First Circuit. With Huberfeld & Leonard, we’ve argued at length (see esp. pp. 75-83) that Maine does not have the winning argument, in an article to be published in the BU Law Review later this month. SSRN version here. The short version is that MOE is a common tool to lock-in states during transition to a new program, was discussed in the briefing, but was not part of the coercion analysis in Justice Roberts’ plurality. The key provision was 42 USC 1396c, the Secretary’s authority to reduce some or all of the funding to non-compliant states. But we will see if Maine wants to argue the substance of this point at the First Circuit.

@koutterson

This Week’s Edition of ACA Challenges

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Nicole Huberfeld

Earlier this week, Jonathan Adler wrote in the National Review Online that challenges to the individual mandate were just beginning.

And today, Oklahoma’s September challenge to the ACA is making headlines.  As I have described before, one of the new theories by which Jonathan Adler and the Cato Institute are seeking to thwart the ACA is by challenging the IRS rule that permits tax subsidies in exchanges created by the federal government, which Cato claims is not supported by the text of the ACA.  (State exchanges are supposedly the only avenue for obtaining tax subsidies for private insurance purchases.)  Oklahoma has brought this challenge to life in federal district court, and Cato’s interest in this and other challenges was apparently reiterated by Professor Adler during a Cato-organized panel on Wednesday. Read More

New “What Ifs”: Election Questions; Ongoing ACA Litigation

kvantassel Leave a comment

By Nicole Huberfeld

Two vaguely related thoughts on the future of the ACA.

First, when I present my co-authored Medicaid post-mortem paper forthcoming in B.U. L. Rev., I find I am frequently asked “what could a President Romney do to dismantle the ACA if he can’t repeal it?”  An incisive answer to this question was posted recently by Tim Jost over at the Health Affairs Blog.  While I generally agree with Tim that it is very hard for the President to change the law without some kind of joint action by Congress (because, of course, that’s our grand design), I feel less confident that the President can’t undermine a law by method of non-enforcement.  The President guides the priorities of the agencies responsible for enforcement of the various aspects of the law, and it would be possible to have atrophy by non-enforcement, especially for the federal spending program changes (Medicare, Medicaid expansion, funding of federally qualified health centers, family planning, etc.).  So, while I would be genuinely surprised if the law were repealed, that does not mean it could not be at least partially neutralized by other means.

Second, the big news in ongoing ACA litigation was the Court’s request for the opinion of the Solicitor General as to whether Liberty University’s challenge should be rendered moot by NFIB.  Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog summarized the questions thus:

The Supreme Court opened its new Term on Monday by asking the federal government to offer its views on whether the way should be cleared for new constitutional challenges to the federal health care law — including a new protest against the individual mandate that the Court had upheld last June.  The request for the government’s views came in response to a rehearing request by a religious-oriented institution, Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.  The university’s earlier petition was simply denied in June, so it asked the Court to reconsider and wipe out a lower court ruling in order to revive the university’s religious challenges to both the individual mandate and the separate insurance coverage mandate for employers. Read More

Quality Control on the Back-End via the ACA and on the Front-End via Tort Litigation

kvantassel Leave a comment

By Vickie J. Williams

I am back after a brief hiatus for the Jewish holidays. L’Shanah Tova to all my readers who have just celebrated the Jewish New Year.

The first Monday in October is, of course, a special day for all of us legal eagles–the Supreme Court is back in session. The other significant thing about October 1 for those interested in health law is that hospitals will now be fined if too many of their Medicare patients are readmitted within 30 days of discharge due to complications. As reported by the Associated Press, this is part of the Affordable Care Act’s push to incentivize quality improvement while trying to save taxpayers money. Right now, admissions for only three medical conditions are subject to the penalty: heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia. Penalties are held to a maximum of 1% of the hospital’s Medicare payments for now, but will rise to a maximum of 3% of Medicare payments over several years. This attempt to control quality of care on the back-end constitutes a marked contrast with the way reimbursement policy has worked over the last several decades to discourage hospitals from keeping patients in beds for “social” reasons, such as having nobody to care for them at home if they are discharged. Many Medicare hospital readmissions are due to non-compliant behavior by fragile patients with few resources to help them once they leave the hospital, something that is not really subject to the hospital’s control, and says nothing about the hospital’s quality of care for the patient. For decades, Medicare payment policy, which generally pays hospitals the same amount for caring for a patient regardless of how long he or she is in the hospital, has encouraged speedy discharges. This is touted as a way to save costs. Apparently, the new policy on payments for readmission is an acknowledgement that there is both a financial and a human cost to treating medically and socially fragile people in the express lanes of health care. It remains to be seen whether the penalties result in better quality care, or significant savings, but surely they will result in increased work for hospital social workers and discharge planners. Read More

Will ACA Create a Doctor Shortage–And If So, What Should We Do About It?

kvantassel Leave a comment

By Jennifer S. Bard

Being in my native land of Connecticut reminds me that Mark Twain is famously, if inaccurately, quoted as saying that everyone talks about the weather but no one ever does anything about it.  Nowhere is this concept more true today than in the handwringing over the coming shortage of physicians following the passage of Affordable Care Act.  We hear dire predictions that the patients who now have access to health care will flood the system resulting in poor care not just for them, but for those among us who were lucky enough to already have health insurance.  The American Academy of Family Physicians has recently expressed its concern that the shortage will be made up by nurse practitioners rather than physicians.

This is a situation where the shortage, if it exists, has nothing to do with fear of law suits.  Applications to U.S. medical schools have been steadily increasing.  Moreover, the shortage isn’t of doctors in general, it is of primary care physicians.  There are still a fair number of dermatologists and plastic surgeons, but not so many physicians who provide the kind of primary and preventive care that actually improve the public’s health.

Uwe Reinhardt, the Princeton health care economist, has been following this issue closely and in a series of posts for the New York Times’ Econmix Blog has been aggressively skeptical about the existence of the shortage as well as the actions taken so far by the Federal Government to address it.  He also questions the need both for the residency system as currently structured and for the benefit to the public of subsidizing it through Medicare given what a poor job it does in producing the primary care doctors the public really needs.  Last week, he undertook an extensive analysis of medical school debt which showed that by charging students intending to be high paid specialists the same as those who might go into primary care has created a loan burden that makes it difficult for any but the most dedicated to turn away from training for the most lucrative specialty for which they can qualify. Read More

ACA Litigation – Oklahoma’s “Federalism Unit” Piles On

kvantassel Leave a comment

By Nicole Huberfeld

We Who Follow ACA Litigation will continue to be in business.  [On September 19], Oklahoma’s Attorney General sought leave to amend the state’s original complaint regarding the individual mandate.  Now the state claims that the tax subsidies offered to those qualifying for financial assistance to obtain insurance through the exchanges are impermissible.  This amended complaint builds on an existing thread of new challenges that was promoted before NFIB was decided.  (The amended complaint also asks the court to consider the state’s nullification law, which should be struck down based on the Supremacy Clause.)  The ACA challengers that never advanced beyond district court have been seeking leave to amend their complaints with regularity.  Last week I posted about the Pacific Legal Foundation’s new strategy, which is rooted in the Orgination Clause.  (The case was also noted over at Balkinization.)

Oklahoma’s amended complaint is grounded in theories advanced by Jonathan Adler and the Cato Institute.  The argument is that tax credits to support the purchase of health insurance through qualified health plans in the exchanges are only available when the exchanges are created by the states, not the federal government.  They claim that section 1311 of the ACA only contemplated providing tax subsidies in state-run exchanges to incentivize states to create the exchanges and that the federally-established exchanges cannot offer the same tax benefit.  In testimony to Congress, they argued the problem is that the proposed IRS regulation implementing the subsidies for people from 100-400% of the FPL in the exchanges applies to both state and federally-run exchanges, not just state exchanges.  Thus, they claim that the IRS has exceeded its statutory authority.  As Tim Jost noted here, the ACA did intend to permit tax credits in federal exchanges.  I agree with Tim’s analysis and would add that the Anti-Injunction Act probably would apply to this provision; unlike the “penalty” of the individual mandate, this is actually described as a “tax.”  Also, the states are not the appropriate parties to raise this issue; individuals benefit from tax credits, individuals would need to pursue the alleged problem.

Read More

Now What? A Look at the Development of Health Exchanges

kvantassel Leave a comment

By Jennifer S. Bard

One of the most common questions I get asked when I talk about health care reform is some version of “how is it actually going to work?” Good question.  So much of the Bill was TBA while its Constitutionality was being tested that only now does it seem as if the both the insurance industry and the government are realizing that it is up to them to make this work.

For example, what, exactly is an Exchange?  There’s surprisingly little information—and all of in the future tense.  For example, the Kaiser Family Foundation website gives this definition: “Exchanges are new organizations that will be set up to create a more organized and competitive market for buying health insurance.” This is how the Government is explaining it.

But there are still a lot of missing pieces.  Who decides the criteria for participation? How will “affordable” be defined? Because the issue isn’t just price—it’s what’s included in that price.   We know that “Exchange” is essentially a web shopping site where people can go to study and compare different health insurance packages.   The difference is that at least some of these packages will be “affordable” and there will always be some kind of “affordable” option for everyone regardless of their current health status.  Beyond that, there are a lot of questions.  Some states are working hard to set up exchanges, others have refused to participate and still others are still in some kind of “planning” or “study” phase.  This map from the Kaiser Foundation gives a 50 state overview.  As the idea of exchanges and the actual implementation of the mandate which will be the mechanism that requires consumers to use these exchanges, there is a growing awareness on the part of the government agencies responsible for running this that it will be a lot of work. For example, this article from Business Week reports concerns expressed by the Commissioner of IRS about how they are actually going to enforce the penalties. There’s already a considerable amount of hiring going in.

Read More

Uninsured Drop, But the Challenges Continue

kvantassel Leave a comment

By Nicole Huberfeld

The Pacific Legal Foundation seems unable to face its defeat before the Court in June.  The PLF has filed a motion seeking leave to amend a complaint on behalf of a small business owner who would have the ACA declared unconstitutional based on the theory that the law was introduced in the Senate, not the House.  Article I section 7 of the Constitution commands that “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House….”  This plaintiff, Matt Sissel, originally filed a complaint challenging the constitutionality of the ACA as exceeding Congress’s commerce power; but, because the Court decided that the ACA is constitutional as an exercise of tax authority in part because it raises revenue, the plaintiff seeks to amend his complaint rather than allow it to be dismissed based on the decision in NFIB v. Sebelius.

It seems ironic that this novel filing made news the same day that the Census Bureau reported that the number and the percentage of uninsured Americans dropped for the first time since 2007.  The drop is largely attributed to young adults being permitted to stay on their parents’ insurance policies under new ACA requirements.  While the drop is movement in the right direction, it is hardly a victory given that nearly one in six Americans still lack health insurance coverage and the percentage of Americans on Medicaid has increased due to the ongoing effects of the Great Recession.  Nevertheless, it is a small taste of the positive outcomes that the ACA may produce if the federal government could stop defending the law and instead focus on implementing it.

Though it seems unlikely that lower federal courts will be interested in the obscure constitutional provision PLF relies on, as I have said before, the administration needs to learn from the nonchalance with which it initally treated challenges to the ACA.  The novelty or obscurity of the challenger’s theory does not correllate to failure with the Roberts Court, which has proven itself willing to accept new legal theories and willing to ignore or modify precedent.

[cross-posted from HealthLawProf Blog]