Today, the Obama Administration released its proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2014. As widely reported, the budget incorporates an offer the President made to Congress in December 2012 to achieve nearly $1.8 trillion in additional deficit reduction over the next 10 years, including $401 billion in health savings (the Administration observes that this level of cuts would “provide more than enough deficit reduction to replace the damaging cuts required by the Joint Committee sequestration”).
Virtually all provider types – and drug manufacturers – would be impacted by the budget provisions, if adopted as proposed. The budget proposal is certainly subject to change during the legislative process, particularly as the House and Senate leadership pursue alternative budget frameworks, and indeed, gridlock could prevent significant action on entitlement reform this year. Nevertheless, the proposals bear careful monitoring because they could eventually be included in any long-elusive “grand bargain” to reform the Medicare program and reduce the federal debt.
Highlights of the Administration’s Medicare and Medicaid proposals include the following:
Medicare Provider Payments
- Reform the Medicare physician fee schedule/sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula to provide stable payments followed by payment linked to participation in an “accountable payment model.”
- Reduce Medicare coverage of bad debts from 65% generally to 25% over three years starting in 2014.
- Reduce Medicare indirect medical education add-on payments by $11 billion over 10 years.
- Reduce payment for post-acute care services in several ways.
- Reduce payment updates for inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs), long-term care hospitals (LTCHs), skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), and home health agencies (HHAs) by 1.1 percentage points, beginning in 2014 through 2023 (the update could not fall below 0%). This provision would save $79 billion over 10 years.
- Adjust the standard for classifying a facility as an IRF (at least 75% of patient cases admitted to an IRF must meet one or more of 13 designated severity conditions), saving about $2.5 billion over 10 years.
- Equalize IRF and SNF payments for three conditions involving hips and knees, pulmonary conditions, as well as other conditions selected by the Secretary, saving $2.0 billion over 10 years.
- Reduce by up to 3% payments to SNFs with high rates of care-sensitive, preventable hospital readmissions, beginning in 2017, saving $2.2 billion over 10 years.
- Implement bundled payments for post-acute care providers (LTCHs, IRFs, SNFs, and HHAs) beginning in 2018. Payments would be bundled for at least half of the total payments for post-acute care providers. Rates based on patient characteristics and other factors would be set to produce a permanent and total cumulative adjustment of -2.85% by 2020. Beneficiary coinsurance would equal levels under current law. This provision would save $8.2 billion over 10 years.
- Align Medicare payments to rural providers with the cost of care, saving $2 billion over 10 years.
- Align Medicare payment for clinical laboratory services with private sector rates and encourage electronic reporting of laboratory results.
Prescription Drug Provisions
- Reduce payment for physician-administered Medicare Part B drugs from 106% of average sales price to 103% of average sales price. Manufacturers would be required to provide a specified rebate in certain instances as determined by the Secretary “to preserve access to care.”
- Provide Medicaid-level drug rebates for brand name and generic drugs provided to beneficiaries who receive Part D low-income subsidies, saving $123 billion over 10 years.
- Close the Medicare Part D donut hole by 2015, rather than 2020, by increasing manufacturer discounts to from 50% to 75% beginning in plan year 2015.
- Lower Medicaid drug costs by clarifying the definition of brand drugs, excluding authorized generic drugs from average manufacturer price calculations for determining manufacturer rebate obligations for brand drugs, making a technical correction to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) alternative rebate for new drug formulations, and calculating Medicaid federal upper limits based only on generic drug prices. These proposals are projected to save $8.8 billion over 10 years.
- Encourage the use of generic drugs by Part D low-income subsidy beneficiaries by modifying copayments, saving approximately $7 billion over 10 years.
- Improve program integrity for Medicaid drug coverage by directing states to track high prescribers and utilizers of Medicaid prescription drugs; requiring manufacturers to make full restitution to states for any covered drug improperly reported by the manufacturer on the Medicaid drug coverage list; allowing more regular audits and surveys of manufacturers to ensure compliance with Medicaid drug rebate agreement requirements; requiring drugs to be electronically listed with the FDA to receive Medicaid coverage; and expanding penalties for reporting false information for the calculation of Medicaid rebates.
- Increase the availability of generic drugs and biologics by authorizing the Federal Trade Commission to stop companies from entering into “pay for delay” agreements and modifying the length of exclusivity on brand name biologics.
Program Integrity/Efficiency Provisions
- Provide $640 million in combined mandatory and discretionary program integrity funding to implement activities that reduce payment error rates, prevent fraud and abuse, target high-risk services and supplies, and enhance civil and criminal enforcement for Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP.
- Authorize civil monetary penalties or other intermediate sanctions for providers who do not update enrollment records and permit exclusion of individuals affiliated with entities sanctioned for fraudulent or other prohibited actions from federal health care programs.
- Expand authority to investigate and prosecute allegations of abuse or neglect of Medicaid beneficiaries in additional health care settings.
- Exclude radiation therapy, therapy services, and advanced imaging from the in-office ancillary services exception to the prohibition against physician self-referrals (Stark law), except in cases where a practice meets certain accountability standards, as defined by the Secretary.
- Require prior authorization of advance imaging services.
- Require prepayment review or prior authorization for power mobility devices.
- Allow the Secretary to create a system to validate practitioners’ orders for certain high-risk items and services.
Other Medicare Provisions
- Revise beneficiary cost-sharing requirements, including increased income-related premiums under Parts B and D, a new home health copayment, and increased premiums for beneficiaries with Medigap policies with particularly low cost-sharing requirements.
- Increase the minimum Medicare Advantage (MA) coding intensity adjustment (which decreases MA plan payments to reflect differences in coding practices between Medicare fee-for-service and MA) and align employer group waiver plan payments with MA bids, saving $19 billion over 10 years.
- Strengthen the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) by reducing the target rate of Medicare cost growth from gross domestic product plus one percentage point to plus 0.5 percentage point.
- Expand the availability of Medicare data released to physicians and other providers for performance improvement, fraud prevention, value-added analysis, and other purposes.
Medicaid Provisions
- Base Medicaid rates for durable medical equipment on Medicare rates to save $4.5 billion over 10 years.
- Align Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payments with expected levels of uncompensated care to save $3.6 billion over 10 years.
- Affirm Medicaid’s position as a payer of last resort when another entity is legally liable to pay claims.
A 131-page Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “Budget in Brief” summary discusses these provisions in greater detail, and also addresses other HHS agency budget proposals and discusses HHS’s implementation of private health insurance protections and programs under the ACA.
