December 7, 2017

Webinar Recording: Industry Implications of Tax Reform Package – Now Available

Brought to you by our Government Affairs team and our legal counsel at Steptoe & Johnson, this webinar covered how brokers could be affected by the comprehensive tax reform legislation being negotiated between House and Senate leaders.

Of note in the healthcare space is that the legislation would repeal the ACA’s individual mandate and would exclude a tax on employer-sponsored insurance(those updates are about 20 minutes into the webinar).

Other Resources
Click here for a memo comparing the pass-through proposals of the House and Senate
with respect to Service Businesses.

Click here for a side-by-side chart comparing the provisions related to pass-throughs in the House and Senate bills, as of December 5.

We’ll have more intel for you as things develop.

Value-Based Payment Part of Strategy Addressing Opioid Addiction

In a recent Health Affairs Blog, authors detail strategies that have been put in place to help address the opioid epidemic. Among efforts to decrease prescriptions and increase access to treatment for opioid addiction, they discuss the use of value-based payment models as part of these efforts.

Look for more on value-based payment models in upcoming issues of Leader’s Edge, and read our previous story on the opioid epidemic and the science of pain.

ACA Legislative Tracker

Our legal team at Steptoe & Johnson has updated its ACA Legislation Tracker as of December 6.  Recent updates are noted in the top box on the first page of the document. Click here for the PDF.

CareFirst Medical Home Slow Medical Cost Growth

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield’s Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) and complementary Total Care and Cost Improvement programs yielded an average overall medical trend of 3.4% from 2013 to 2016, beating the average 7.5% growth in healthcare costs the company experienced in the five years before instituting the programs.

CareFirst says it has had a 15% reduction in hospital inpatient admissions since launching the program in 2011 along with 13% fewer emergency room visits, 6.2% fewer days in the hospital, and $945 million in savings measured against the expected cost of care. In 2016 alone, CareFirst members seeing medical-home providers had 10.5% fewer hospital admissions that CareFirst members under the care of non-PCMH physicians, along with 17.1% fewer days in the hospital, 34.7% fewer hospital readmissions, and a 9.8% lower cost per emergency room visit.

Want more from our December issue? Read Leader’s Edge.

Joel Wood, SVP, Government Affairs
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