Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles of the Week

If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest...

The Top Three...

Stat: White House Issues Rules To Push Insurers To Cover Mental Health Care The Biden administration on Monday announced it would finalize a highly anticipated proposal meant to force health insurers to cover mental health care on the same basis as physical health conditions. It is the latest salvo in a long-running federal government effort to crack down on insurance plans skimping on treatment for conditions including anxiety, depression, and addiction. (Facher, 9/9)

Reuters: US Employers Expect Nearly 6% Spike In Health Insurance Costs In 2025, Mercer Says U.S. employers expect health insurance costs to rise an average 5.8% in 2025, largely due to increased cost of medical services as well as higher use, according to a survey released by consulting firm Mercer on Thursday. The year 2025 is projected to be the third consecutive year in which healthcare costs for employers rise by more than 5%. Costs increased an average 3% during the decade prior, the report said. In part, the higher cost of each medical service is driven by a continued shortage of healthcare workers, linked to providers raising prices, Mercer said. Spending on behavioral health and popular but pricey GLP-1 weight loss drugs are also contributors. (Niasse, 9/12)

Modern Healthcare: Healthcare Costs, Reproductive Rights Top Issues In 2024 Election More than 40% of voters say the cost of care, prescription drugs and insurance premiums are the most pressing healthcare concerns for the presidential candidates to address, according to a KFF survey released Tuesday. As the 2024 presidential election draws near, voters are weighing in on how policies under Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump could impact individuals’ access to healthcare. (Devereaux, 9/10)

For a Deeper Dive...

Modern Healthcare: Congressional Fighting Could Derail Healthcare Agenda —Again Congress returns this week with little time to pass annual spending bills that fund agencies including the Health and Human Services Department — but a new fight over migrant voting threatens to derail those efforts. Lawmakers are supposed to pass 12 appropriations bills before the start of each new fiscal year Oct. 1. When lawmakers left town at the end of the July, the House had passed just five, despite Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) pledge to pass them all. The Senate had passed none. (McAuliff, 9/9)

The New York Times: Almost 50 Million Americans Have Had An Obamacare Plan Since 2014 Nearly 50 million Americans have been covered by health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces since they opened a decade ago, according to tax data analyzed by the Treasury Department and published on Tuesday. Federal officials said that the findings represent roughly one in seven U.S. residents, a broad swath of the population that underscores the vast, and seemingly irreversible, reach of the 2010 law. (Weiland, 9/10)

The Hill: Why Are So Many Parents ‘So Stressed They Cannot Function’? Psychologists and parenting experts who spoke with The Hill said many other societal factors are also contributing to parents’ emotional exhaustion — including decreasing access to child care and changing expectations of what it means to be a good parent. Experts who spoke with The Hill said the surgeon general was right in naming social media as one of the biggest parental stressors of the modern era. (O'Connell-Domenech, 9/11)

AP: Congressional Democrats Push Resolution That Says Hospitals Must Provide Emergency Abortions A resolution introduced by Congressional Democrats would make clear that U.S. emergency rooms need to provide emergency abortions when a woman’s health or life is at risk, despite strict state abortion bans. The resolution has little chance of passing a Republican-controlled House in an election year. Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington announced on social media that she would introduce a Senate version of the resolution next week. (Seitz, 9/12)

ABC7 New York: More Members Of FDNY Have Died From 9/11-Related Illness Than Were Killed On Day Of Attack Illnesses linked to the September 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center have now killed more members of the New York City Fire Department than were killed on the day of the attack itself. "Those insurmountable losses did not end at the World Trade Center site," Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker said Monday. "Instead, we have seen our members become sick because of time they spent working in the rescue and recovery." There were 343 members of the FDNY that died on 9/11. In the 23 years since, more than 370 have died of World Trade Center-related illnesses, the department said. (9/10)

The New York Times: The Campaign Issue That Isn’t: Health Care Reform Donald J. Trump tried to repeal Obamacare in 2017. Kamala Harris proposed a fundamental restructuring of U.S. health care in 2019, a move to a single- payer system. These bold ideas were no aberration. In nearly every major presidential race for decades, health care has been a central issue. Remember Bill Clinton’s (doomed) health reform plan? George W. Bush’s Medicare drug plan? Mitt Romney’s Medicare privatization proposal? Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for all? As you may have noticed, with less than two months until Election Day, big, prominent plans for health reform are nowhere to be seen. Even in an election that has been fairly light on policy proposals, health care’s absence is notable. (Sanger-Katz, 9/13)

KFF Health News: The First Year Of Georgia’s Medicaid Work Requirement Is Mired In Red Tape On a recent summer evening, Raymia Taylor wandered into a recreation center in a historical downtown neighborhood, the only enrollee to attend a nearly two-hour event for people who have signed up for Georgia’s experimental Medicaid expansion. The state launched the program in July 2023, requiring participants to document that they’re working, studying, or doing other qualifying activities for 80 hours a month in exchange for health coverage. (Rayasam and Whitehead, 9/13)

Stat: Bill Cassidy Dismisses ACA Repeal, Site Neutral Payments Policy A key Senate Republican dismissed the idea that the Affordable Care Act can be repealed next Congress, despite former President Trump’s interest in the issue. If Republicans take control of the Senate after November’s election, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) would likely be in charge of the Senate’s health committee, which would share responsibility for changes to the Affordable Care Act. He said Wednesday morning that any comprehensive health care reforms would have to be bipartisan, and noted that repealing the Affordable Care Act would be a nonstarter among Democrats. (Zhang, 9/11)

Axios: Americans Could See Relief From Surprise Ambulance Bills Under New Proposal Patients could be spared huge, unexpected bills for ambulance rides under a new plan aimed at closing a gap in the surprise billing law. Many Americans avoid calling 911 when they're having a medical crisis because of cost concerns. Others get stuck with massive unanticipated bills that are a major driver of medical debt in the U.S. (Goldman, 9/12)

Stat: Presidential Debate: Trump Still Has No ACA Replacement Plan Eight years after he was elected president on a promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, former President Donald Trump still hasn’t decided how he wants to do it. In a presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, Trump said he had “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act, but offered no details. (Zhang, 9/11)

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A few years ago I started a weekly e-mail for friends and colleagues who want to keep up on major federal health policy developments but did not have time to plod through all the minutiae--they were busy doing important things like running organizations and taking care of patients! Much to my surprise, it became pretty popular. I have now converted to a weekly newsletter format so you can manage your own subscription preferences and forward to others that might be interested.

These summaries represent my judgement on health policy issues that may not on the front pages, but are relevant to clinicians, administrators, and educators. I monitor many news sources and clipping services to identify content for this newsletter and I try hard to be as factual, balanced, and non-partisan as possible. While the articles are written by others (with credit attributed), the choice of what to include is entirely mine. If you are interested in receiving a daily summary of health policy news, you might consider signing up for the KHN Morning Briefing. If you enjoy podcasts, I suggest What the Health? and Tradeoffs.

-Gregg S. Margolis, PhD