Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Assessing Health Law's Impact At Five Years
The number of uninsured U.S. residents fell by more than 11 million since President Barack Obama signed the health care overhaul five years ago, according to a pair of reports Tuesday from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although that still would leave about 37 million people uninsured, it's the lowest level measured in more than 15 years. (3/24)
Much has changed since March 23, 2010. Nearly 11.7 million people have signed up on the Obamacare exchange for 2015 coverage. The growth in health care spending has slowed to record lows. Medicaid enrollment has soared to 70 million, up nearly 20% since mid-2013. (Luhby, 3/23)
Nadereh Pourat, director of research at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, gives an involuntary gasp when she's asked where California's health care system would be without the reforms and changes of the past five years. "It's not fathomable," Pourat said. (Gorn, 3/23)
The Affordable Care Act let the administration create several experiments designed to transform how health care is paid for. The goal is to find alternatives to the fee-for-service system that pays doctors and hospitals more for doing more tests and treatments. That system has long been blamed for hundreds of billions of dollars of wasteful spending that doesn’t help patients and sometimes harms them. In January, the Obama administration announced plans to accelerate a shift to new experimental payment models it has tested in the past few years. (Tozzi, 3/23)
Meanwhile, California and Colorado exchanges wrestle with problems -
California's Obamacare exchange has sent out 120,000 corrected tax forms, but it said tens of thousands of other consumers are still waiting for their information. Peter Lee, executive director of the Covered California exchange, said those remaining households should get tax forms related to their health-law subsidies by the end of March. "We are very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused for too many consumers," Lee said. "This is far from ideal." (Terhune, 3/23)
An internal audit of Connect for Health Colorado found millions of dollars in mistakes, the latest in a string of audit reports showing poor financial controls at the state health insurance exchange last year. The audit, presented to the exchange board Monday, found questionable costs of as much as $12 million — most described as "material weaknesses" in internal controls. (Draper, 3/23)
