Health Care Reform Blog : Health Care Law Reform : McDermott Will & Emery Law Firm

The Facts

Both the House health reform bill, H.R. 3962 (Affordable Health Care for America Act), and the Senate version (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), include provisions (House Section 1301 and Senate Section 3022) establishing Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).  ACOs are provider-centric organizations focused on the costs and quality of care received by a designated population of patients over time.  ACOs can consist of vertically and horizontally positioned providers, including physician groups and hospitals.  In its most basic concept, although paid on a fee-for-service basis, ACOs that meet quality-of-care targets and reduce the aggregate costs of care rendered to their patient population relative to a spending benchmark are rewarded with a share of the savings they achieve for the Medicare program.

What’s at Stake

Regardless of whether health reform legislation is passed, providers will be increasingly challenged to adopt operating models through which they are responsible and accountable for the quality, cost and overall care of a defined population of patients.  Emphasis will be placed on clinical processes and outcomes, the patient care experience and utilization.

Steps to Consider

• Evaluate why and assess those actions necessary to migrate from a financially driven model to a clinically integrated driven model if you previously operated a Physician Hospital Organization (PHO) that did not succeed. 
• Evaluate investments in infrastructure and redesigned care processes for high quality and efficient service delivery.
• Establish appropriate committees to explore and evaluate adoption of clinical best practices.
• Bolster capabilities to capture and report on quality measures.
• Coordinate with other providers to facilitate the sharing of effective strategies on quality improvement, care coordination and efficiency.
• Assess hospital-physician relationships and your ability to promote and sustain quality based initiatives.

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The Facts

On October 30, 2009, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued an Interim Final Rule (the Rule) to amend the existing administrative simplification enforcement regulations adopted pursuant to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).  The Rule implements amendments to HIPAA made by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Prior to enactment of the HITECH Act, covered entities under HIPAA (health care providers that conduct certain transactions in electronic form, health plans and health care clearinghouses) were subject to HIPAA civil money penalties of up to $100 per violation, with an annual cap of $25,000 for identical violations within a calendar year. The Rule preserves this structure for violations occurring prior to February 18, 2009. Violations occurring on or after February 18, 2009 are subject to a new penalties scheme, which ranges from a minimum per-offense penalty of $100 to $50,000, depending on the level of culpability. The Rule also increases the annual cap for identical violations from $25,000 to $1.5 million, and alters the available affirmative defenses to a HIPAA enforcement action. Business associates are directly subject to the new enforcement scheme beginning February 17, 2010. HIPAA’s criminal penalties remain unchanged.

What’s at Stake

The new HIPAA civil money penalties scheme that will be enforced under the Rule substantially increases the potential penalties for HIPAA violations by covered entities occurring on or after February 18, 2009. Business associates will be directly subject to HIPAA, including the new enforcement scheme, for the first time beginning February 17, 2010. Prior to February 17, 2010, business associates are only subject to HIPAA requirements through contracts with covered entities.

Steps to Consider

Covered entities and business associates should review their current HIPAA compliance policies and procedures to ensure they are meeting amended requirements.  Business associates that previously lacked HIPAA privacy and security policies and procedures should implement policies and train their work force. McDermott has prepared HIPAA privacy policies and forms for covered entities and business associates.  A preview of the manual's table of contents for covered entities can be viewed here, and the business associates table of contents can be viewed here.

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The Facts

On November 18, 2009, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada put forth the Democrats’ health reform plan, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  The more than 2,000 page bill was crafted by merging, tweaking and augmenting health reform legislation approved by the Senate Finance Committee in October and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in July.  Set forth below are some of the bill’s principal provisions. 

• Requires most legal residents to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty of $95 in 2014, $350 in 2015 and $750 in 2016
• Imposes a $750 per employee penalty on firms with more than 50 workers that do not offer coverage if any of the firm’s employees obtain subsidized coverage through the new health insurance exchange 
• Requires coverage of prevention and wellness benefits and exempts these benefits from deductibles and other cost-sharing requirements
• Implements insurance market reforms including disallowing lifetime and annual limits and prohibiting preexisting condition exclusions
• Substantially reduces the growth of Medicare payment rates for many services (as compared to growth rates under current law)
• Creates a new independent Medicare advisory board, which could recommend payment reductions
• Seeks to promote the quality and efficiency of health care by linking payment to better quality outcomes
• Imposes a 40 percent excise tax on employer-sponsored health insurance with annual premiums above $8,500 for single coverage and $23,000 for family coverage 
• Imposes annual flat fees of $2.3 billion on the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector, $2 billion on the medical device manufacturing sector and $6.7 billion on the health insurance sector
• Imposes a 5 percent excise tax on voluntary cosmetic surgical and medical procedures
• Increases the Medicare payroll tax rate from 1.45 percent to 1.95 percent on individuals earning over $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000
• Sets up health insurance exchanges through which approximately 25 million people are estimated to purchase health insurance coverage
• Creates a new public plan – the Community Health Insurance Option (states could opt out, and the government would negotiate payment rates with providers)

What’s at Stake

Given the sweeping nature of the bill, every aspect of health care in the United States would be affected.

Steps to Consider

• Carefully evaluate the impact of the provisions. 
• Assess the cost of compliance with the new provisions. 
• Examine ongoing business decisions in light of the direction health reform is taking.
• Consider working to impact the shape of health reform legislation.

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The Facts

The Senate’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mirrors the Senate Finance Committee’s proposal to modify local Medicare Advantage (MA) Plan payments by moving to an enrollment-weighted average competitive bidding system.

Currently, local benchmarks reflect Adjusted Community Rate for each county, as updated annually over the past several years.  To calculate Plan payments, MA Organizations annually submit bids for their plan benefit packages that are compared to the benchmark for the county/counties in the Plan’s service area. 

Under the Senate bill, by CY 2015, benchmarks would equal enrollment-weighted averages of local MA Plan bids for the service area.  A ceiling would be established in each area so that local benchmarks could not exceed the levels that would have existed under current law.

What’s at Stake

The Senate proposal is markedly different from H.R. 3962, which would phase in benchmarks equal to the adjusted average per capita cost estimate payable under traditional Fee-For-Service Medicare.  Importantly, the House bill would initiate the transition beginning with the 2011 benefit year, as compared to the Senate proposal, which would initiate the transition with the 2012 benefit year.

Steps to Consider

The Senate bill is estimated to reduce MA Plan payments by $118 billion between 2010 and 2019, the traditional 10-year cost estimate period.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that H.R. 3962 would reduce MA Plan payments by $170 billion in the same period.

In anticipation of these reforms, MA Organizations should begin to analyze their plan benefit packages, provider payment arrangements and member populations, and to discern the extent to which they can modify operations and/or develop and implement new initiatives.

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The Facts

On November 7, 2009, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care For America Act. Unlike the Senate Finance bill, which would fund reform largely with excise taxes on “Cadillac” insurance plans and on various health care sectors, the House bill would raise much of its new revenue—$739 billion over 10 years—through tax law changes largely unrelated to health care. Notable provisions include the following:

• Imposing a 5.4 percent surtax on adjusted gross income of individuals earning over $500,000 ($1 million for joint filers), raising $460.5 billion over the next decade
• Excluding “black liquor” from the biofuel producer tax credit, saving $23.9 billion over the next seven years 
• Requiring reporting to the Internal Revenue Service of most business-to-business payments over $600, a provision that is also included in the Senate Finance bill and is expected to increase revenues by $17.1 billion over 10 years
• Limiting treaty benefits for some foreign multinationals, raising $7.5 billion over the next decade
• Repealing the planned reform of interest allocation by multinationals, raising $6.0 billion over the next decade
• Codifying and tightening the common-law economic substance doctrine, with corresponding increase in penalties, raising $5.7 billion over 10 years

The House bill would also raise revenue through several health-care-related tax provisions that would affect businesses across sectors:

• A new payroll tax on employers that do not offer coverage, raising $135 billion over 10 years
• Imposing limits and higher penalties on health flexible spending accounts, raising nearly $20 billion over the next decade

What’s at Stake

Businesses in sectors far removed from health care may experience adverse tax changes and new reporting burdens. As the focus now moves to the Senate, additional changes, possibly including new revenue raising proposals, are likely.

Steps to Consider

Entities outside the health care sector should monitor the progress of the health reform debate for tax changes having an impact beyond their employees’ health care.

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The Facts

The health care fraud provisions in the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3162), the House health reform bill released last week, are largely the same as those in earlier proposals (click here and here for more information), and similar to those included in the Senate Finance Committee Bill, signaling clear potential for these provisions to become part of any final health reform package. The latest House bill now includes a provision requiring the Secretary of HHS to establish a self-disclosure protocol to enable health care providers and suppliers to disclose actual or potential violations of the physician self-referral law (Stark Law). Additional provisions from the Senate Finance Committee bill that overlap with the latest House bill include the following:

• “Physician Payment Sunshine” provisions require drug and device manufacturers to report certain payments to physicians and other health providers. 
• Physicians are required to document referrals to programs at high risk of waste and abuse, such as durable medical equipment or home health services, as well as face-to-face encounters with patients prior to certifying eligibility for home health services or ordering durable medical equipment. The Secretary may apply this requirement to any other service upon a finding that it would reduce the risk of fraud waste and abuse. 
• Medicare and Medicaid overpayments must be returned within 60 days of identification of overpayments. Failure to return overpayments constitutes a false claim for purposes of the False Claims Act.

What’s at Stake

The fraud and abuse provisions in both the House and Senate health reform bills are quietly moving through the health reform process. It is likely that any health reform package passed by Congress will include significant fraud and abuse provisions. In addition to increased scrutiny, these provisions will require additional commitment and resources for compliance efforts. 

Steps to Consider

Providers should closely monitor these proposals and consider how current compliance programs, policies and procedures will need to be updated to address requirements common to the health reform proposals.

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