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Readers Call on Congress to Bolster Medicare and Fix Loopholes in Health Policy

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Thu, 29 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names.

Occupational Therapists Change Lives. CMS Must Better Support Them.

Occupational therapists are critical in helping patients adjust to new circumstances, empowering them with the tools they need to overcome barriers and regain control over their lives. Whether you’re transitioning from homelessness into a home (“In Los Angeles, Occupational Therapists Tapped to Help Homeless Stay Housed,” Jan. 24) or relearning how to do everyday tasks following a stroke, OTs are key to patients’ care plan.

But the critical care provided by OTs is being threatened by another year of payment cuts imposed by Medicare, our nation’s health care program for people age 65 and up. Many older patients treated by OTs access insurance coverage through Medicare, which typically reimburses providers at a lower rate than private insurers. And now, with payment cuts that went into effect on Jan. 1 — despite warnings and backlash from lawmakers, patients, and providers — OTs are struggling to deliver care with lower Medicare payment.

Investing in occupational therapy improves health outcomes for patients, has the potential to reduce the burden on hospitals and other health care clinicians, and keeps individuals healthy and independent. Medicare’s payment cuts only compromise the ability of providers to deliver comprehensive, compassionate care. Medicare must recognize the long-term patient benefits occupational therapy has to offer.

Luckily, Congress is considering a bill that would reverse these harmful payment cuts. The Preserving Seniors’ Access to Physicians Act of 2023 (HR 6683), would reverse the cuts that went into effect on Jan. 1, alleviating financial stress for occupational therapists and preserving patient access. I strongly urge lawmakers to prioritize and protect occupational therapy services and immediately pass HR 6683 for America’s Medicare patients.

— Doug Fosco, an occupational therapist practicing at Two Trees Physical Therapy in Ventura, California

An assistant professor at Ontario’s Western University weighed in on X.

Great to see the role of #occupationaltherapy with persons who experience #homelessness profiled in @latimes. Thanks #deborahpitts for your work in LA with @USC and #skidrowhousingtrust . Check it out @CAOT_ACE @OSOTvoice ! @CAEHomelessness https://t.co/S5s9jhgoxI

— Carrie Anne Marshall, PhD (@cannemarshall) January 24, 2024

— Carrie Anne Marshall, Sydenham, Ontario

Congress Must Finish the Job on Site-Neutral Payments

There’s an obvious solution to rein in government spending and patient out-of-pocket costs: Pay identical prices for identical care (“In Fight Over Medicare Payments, the Hospital Lobby Shows Its Strength,” Feb. 13).

As a community oncologist, it is clear to me how Medicare favors hospitals by paying more for services provided in hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs) than the same care delivered in community-based facilities. For example, last year, Medicare paid over 2.5 times as much in an HOPD as in a free-standing office for drug administration services. It’s not just Medicare paying too much; patients also face higher out-of-pocket costs for care provided in HOPDs. If the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act is signed into law, cancer patients would immediately pay less for treatments like chemotherapy.

One unintended consequence of current payment disparities is consolidation. To leverage higher reimbursements, health systems scoop up independent practices — a growing problem that is particularly pronounced in oncology. From 2008 to 2020, 435 community cancer clinics closed, while 722 contracted with or were acquired by hospitals. This consolidation is reducing patient access, particularly in rural areas, where many independent clinics operate small satellite sites that tend to be the first to close when hospitals acquire a community-based practice.

It’s time for Congress to finish the job through bills like the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act and the SITE Act, which would help level the playing field once and for all.

— Scott Rushing, Vancouver, Washington

The chief marketing officer of SKYGEN cut to the chase on X.

In the battle to control healthcare costs, hospitals are deploying their political power to protect their bottom lines. https://t.co/97r502KrpM

— Donald H. Polite (@DonaldPolite) February 15, 2024

— Donald H. Polite, Milwaukee

The ‘Gold Card’ Shuffle

Prior authorization, by definition, creates delays in care and bureaucratic barriers for physicians — which is why it is so troubling that many insurers now require prior authorization for large categories of procedures with no evidence of overuse or inappropriate use. With health insurers increasingly implementing questionable prior authorization policies, state and federal lawmakers are racing to erect safeguards that ensure patients’ access to timely care (“States Target Health Insurers’ ‘Prior Authorization’ Red Tape,” Feb. 12).

Much of the legislation to address this growing problem centers around the use of “Gold Cards” that exempt providers whose previous requests for prior authorization have been approved for a certain period. In general, these laws are important for patients who can’t afford to wait for care — especially in the field of gastroenterology where severe abdominal pain or blood in the stool could indicate a serious condition like cancer.

However, some insurance companies are co-opting the “Gold Card” term to justify new prior authorization requirements instead of streamlining existing ones. Consider the case of UnitedHealthcare, which announced it would roll out a “Gold Card” prior authorization program this year for most colonoscopies and endoscopies. No other insurer has levied such a policy, nor does the research suggest there is an overutilization of these vital services. Despite nearly a year of good faith efforts to seek transparency and guidance from UHC, the company has failed to release any data or justification that these services are improperly utilized.

If anything, diagnostic and surveillance colonoscopies and endoscopies may be underutilized. New research from the American Cancer Society shows an alarming spike in the number of younger Americans being diagnosed with and dying from colorectal cancer. Since symptoms of colorectal cancer don’t often appear until the disease is at a more advanced stage, early detection is key. Any disruption to surveillance colonoscopies (which follow removal of a precancerous polyp and are part of the screening continuum) caused by UHC’s forthcoming prior authorization policy would be dangerous for the company’s 27 million commercial beneficiaries.

The American Gastroenterological Association strongly urges UHC to rescind its “Gold Card” prior authorization policy. Policymakers must monitor how insurers are co-opting concepts meant to protect patients, in particular UHC’s faux “Gold Card,” which threatens patient access to a procedure proven to save lives.

— Barbara Jung, president of the American Gastroenterological Association, Seattle

In an X post, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute pointed out the value in requiring prior authorization.

Case-by-case prior authorization is never fun, but surely preferable to most other methods of eliminating needless spending (ex post denials of reimbursement, higher cost-sharing, capped global budgets, etc…) https://t.co/nYijeiAUtP

— Chris Pope (@CPopeHC) February 12, 2024

— Chris Pope, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, New York City

Hospice in Prison: A Transformative View

I was so impressed with Markian Hawryluk’s exceptionally well-written article “Death and Redemption in an American Prison” (Feb. 21). I was privileged to serve as an inaugural member of the American Hospital Association’s Circle of Life Award committee, from 1999 to 2004. The awards were established to recognize the most outstanding hospice and palliative care programs in the U.S. The very first year, we received an application from the country’s largest maximum-security prison in Angola, Louisiana, the subject of Mr. Hawryluk’s wonderful article. The prison was one of the five finalists chosen for a site visit in 2000. I volunteered to be on team to visit and evaluate the prison’s hospice services.

Twenty-four years later, I still remember my conversation with one of the inmate volunteers who had just returned from bathing and feeding a dying prisoner. He told me the inmate said, “I love you.” Then the inmate volunteer stated, “I never heard those words before — not from my father, who I never met, nor from my mother.” In 2000, if one were sentenced to life at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, there was no chance for parole. When we met with the warden, he mentioned there was a waiting list of prisoners who wanted to be hospice volunteers.

Please convey my deep appreciation to Mr. Hawryluk for his outstanding article.

— Paul Hofmann, president of the Hofmann Healthcare Group, Moraga, California

A digital storyteller shared the article on X.

Your one, long read for today – it’s beautifully and thoughtfully written and reported”Sometimes when you’re in a dark place, you find out who you really are and what you wish you could be,” Steven Garner said. “Even in darkness, I could be a light.”https://t.co/57asjh11ZV

— Ameera B. ا ميرة بت 🪬 (@meerabee) February 19, 2024

— Ameera Butt, Los Angeles

Feeling Insecure Because of Social Security Tactics

When will you continue your series on the overpayments to the Social Security Administration (“Overpayment Outrage”)? People are still suffering without benefits because the agency says people were overpaid and wants the money back. Why is nobody else asking more questions?

People in this country worked hard and paid taxes. And when it is time to retire, the Social Security Administration refuses to pay if, all of a sudden, it discovers you have been overpaid. They have told me I owe them $30,000 from over 20 years ago, and I do not know what they are talking about, but they want to take my retirement money until it’s paid off. Or they want you to say it is OK to take a percentage out. Doing that would say you’re guilty and you owe the money — to me, that’s blackmail.

New immigrants get free phones, medical care, debit cards, food assistance, schooling … that comes to more than my little amount of retirement money. It seems the government can afford to take care of them, but not their own. Everyone who has had their Social Security taken away should be entitled to the free services they get, as we are in the same position — now we have nothing either.

— Thomas Troy, New York City

Lifelong Minnesotan and epidemiologist Eric Weinhandl chimed in on X.

Relatively severe incompetency. Social Security Chief Apologizes to Congress for Misleading Testimony on Overpaymentshttps://t.co/HYPcTU5tVW

— Eric Weinhandl (@eric_weinhandl) December 27, 2023

— Eric Weinhandl, Victoria, Minnesota

A Balanced View of the Law Curbing Surprise Bills

KFF Health News’ Elisabeth Rosenthal has long advocated for quality, patient-centric medical care. However, her recent article, “The No Surprises Act Comes with Some Surprises” (Feb. 14), falls short in its analysis of surprise medical billing and the federal No Surprises Act (NSA). While she places blame on physicians, the reality is more complicated.

Patients with health insurance should not be burdened with paying more than their normal in-network cost-sharing amount for unexpected out-of-network care. This is not controversial. The legislative debate was never about whether to act on surprise billing, but rather how to act. While insurers favored policies that would allow them to calculate the payment rate medical providers receive, with the NSA, Congress instead chose an approach intended to protect sustainable payment rates that would preserve patients’ access to care. The NSA removes patients from payment disputes between insurers and providers and is intended to encourage negotiations between insurers and providers, with an option for neutral arbitration.

Rosenthal’s article implies a “greedy doctor” narrative, omitting discussion of insurers as contributing to the problems with the NSA’s implementation. While the article notes that many requests for arbitration came from private equity-associated provider organizations, it neglected to note that a single insurance company (UnitedHealthcare) was involved in almost 40% of arbitration disputes. That is more than the rest of the top five insurance organizations combined. The article also quotes and references papers by Zack Cooper, whose undisclosed connections with UnitedHealthcare came to light through litigation. As reported, UnitedHealthcare not only provided data to Cooper, but helped frame the narrative of the work.

NSA rulemaking has financially incentivized insurers to leverage the NSA to unilaterally reduce existing contracted rates and push physicians out-of-network. As for the projected number of requests for arbitration in 2022 (which underestimated “providers’ ire by an order of magnitude”), that projection ignored existing data. In just the first six months of 2021, Texas alone had more than twice as many arbitration submissions for its state law as the federal government projected for the nation for a full year. More importantly, the article ignores the issue of why doctors request arbitration. Since arbitration is baseball-style and “loser pays,” there is a strong disincentive to request it without a solid reason. In the second quarter of 2023, providers won nearly 80% of disputes, reflecting the fact that doctors are going to arbitration when insurers’ actions are unreasonable.

Further, while it is true that before the NSA too many patients were receiving bills for unexpected out-of-network care, a report from the Department of Health and Human Services noted that out-of-network billing was actually declining prior to the NSA. Physician survey data suggests that post-NSA out-of-network care is now increasing due to some insurers’ actions.

The bipartisan NSA is a balanced solution to a complicated problem. Difficulties with the law’s implementation, including the volume of dispute submissions and backlog of cases, are due to unintended consequences from rulemaking. Addressing these challenges requires an honest conversation about their cause. Going forward, rulemaking is needed to promote fair network contracting, limit the need for arbitration, and, most importantly, protect patients’ access to care.

— Rich Heller, a pediatric radiologist and the associate chief medical officer for health policy, Radiology Partners, Chicago

Anesthetist-emergency physician-family doctor David Moniz, in an X post, warned of the “unseen consequences” of the No Surprises Act.

Check out the surprising outcomes of the No Surprises Act, designed to protect patients from unexpected medical bills. While it’s successfully shielded many patients, there are unseen consequences. Read the full article here: https://t.co/YFa0xweRe7#health, #healthpolicy, #he

— David Moniz (@DavidMoniz15) February 14, 2024

— David Moniz, Chilliwack, British Columbia

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Title: Readers Call on Congress to Bolster Medicare and Fix Loopholes in Health Policy
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/reader-response-congress-medicare-health-policy-loopholes-letters-to-editor/
Published Date: Thu, 29 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Kaiser Health News

How To Find the Right Medical Rehab Services

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kffhealthnews.org – Jordan Rau, KFF Health News – 2025-07-15 04:45:00


Rehabilitation therapy is essential after events like strokes, accidents, or surgeries, offering physical, occupational, speech, and sometimes respiratory therapy in hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, or at home. Physical therapy improves strength and movement; occupational therapy aids daily activities; speech therapy addresses communication. Insurance coverage varies, with limits often imposed by private insurers. Inpatient rehab hospitals require patients to handle intensive therapy, with stays averaging 12 days. Choosing a facility involves checking specialties, safety records, patient outcomes, and proximity to family for support. Alternatives include nursing homes for less intensive care or long-term care hospitals for severe cases. Outpatient and home therapies are options for those able to return home. Reducing care transitions is advised for safety.


Rehabilitation therapy can be a godsend after hospitalization for a stroke, a fall, an accident, a joint replacement, a severe burn, or a spinal cord injury, among other conditions. Physical, occupational, and speech therapy are offered in a variety of settings, including at hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and at home. It’s crucial to identify a high-quality, safe option with professionals experienced in treating your condition.

What kinds of rehab therapy might I need?

Physical therapy helps patients improve their strength, stability, and movement and reduce pain, usually through targeted exercises. Some physical therapists specialize in neurological, cardiovascular, or orthopedic issues. There are also geriatric and pediatric specialists. Occupational therapy focuses on specific activities (referred to as “occupations”), often ones that require fine motor skills, like brushing teeth, cutting food with a knife, and getting dressed. Speech and language therapy help people communicate. Some patients may need respiratory therapy if they have trouble breathing or need to be weaned from a ventilator.

Will insurance cover rehab?

Medicare, health insurers, workers’ compensation, and Medicaid plans in some states cover rehab therapy, but plans may refuse to pay for certain settings and may limit the amount of therapy you receive. Some insurers may require preauthorization, and some may terminate coverage if you’re not improving. Private insurers often place annual limits on outpatient therapy. Traditional Medicare is generally the least restrictive, while private Medicare Advantage plans may monitor progress closely and limit where patients can obtain therapy.

Should I seek inpatient rehabilitation?

Patients who still need nursing or a doctor’s care but can tolerate three hours of therapy five days a week may qualify for admission to a specialized rehab hospital or to a unit within a general hospital. Patients usually need at least two of the main types of rehab therapy: physical, occupational, or speech. Stays average around 12 days.

How do I choose?

Look for a place that is skilled in treating people with your diagnosis; many inpatient hospitals list specialties on their websites. People with complex or severe medical conditions may want a rehab hospital connected to an academic medical center at the vanguard of new treatments, even if it’s a plane ride away.

“You’ll see youngish patients with these life-changing, fairly catastrophic injuries,” like spinal cord damage, travel to another state for treatment, said Cheri Blauwet, chief medical officer of Spaulding Rehabilitation in Boston, one of 15 hospitals the federal government has praised for cutting-edge work.

But there are advantages in selecting a hospital close to family and friends who can help after you are discharged. Therapists can help train at-home caregivers.

How do I find rehab hospitals?

The discharge planner or caseworker at the acute care hospital should provide options. You can search for inpatient rehabilitation facilities by location or name through Medicare’s Care Compare website. There you can see how many patients the rehab hospital has treated with your condition — the more the better. You can search by specialty through the American Medical Rehabilitation Providers Association, a trade group that lists its members.

Find out what specialized technologies a hospital has, like driving simulators — a car or truck that enable a patient to practice getting in and out of a vehicle — or a kitchen table with utensils to practice making a meal.

How can I be confident a rehab hospital is reliable?

It’s not easy: Medicare doesn’t analyze staffing levels or post on its website results of safety inspections as it does for nursing homes. You can ask your state public health agency or the hospital to provide inspection reports for the last three years. Such reports can be technical, but you should get the gist. If the report says an “immediate jeopardy” was called, that means inspectors identified safety problems that put patients in danger.

The rate of patients readmitted to a general hospital for a potentially preventable reason is a key safety measure. Overall, for-profit rehabs have higher readmission rates than nonprofits do, but there are some with lower readmission rates and some with higher ones. You may not have a nearby choice: There are fewer than 400 rehab hospitals, and most general hospitals don’t have a rehab unit.

You can find a hospital’s readmission rates under Care Compare’s quality section. Rates lower than the national average are better.

Another measure of quality is how often patients are functional enough to go home after finishing rehab rather than to a nursing home, hospital, or health care institution. That measure is called “discharge to community” and is listed under Care Compare’s quality section. Rates higher than the national average are better.

Look for reviews of the hospital on Yelp and other sites. Ask if the patient will see the same therapist most days or a rotating cast of characters. Ask if the therapists have board certifications earned after intensive training to treat a patient’s particular condition.

Visit if possible, and don’t look only at the rooms in the hospital where therapy exercises take place. Injuries often occur in the 21 hours when a patient is not in therapy, but in his or her room or another part of the building. Infections, falls, bedsores, and medication errors are risks. If possible, observe whether nurses promptly respond to call lights, seem overloaded with too many patients, or are apathetically playing on their phones. Ask current patients and their family members if they are satisfied with the care.

What if I can’t handle three hours of therapy a day?

A nursing home that provides rehab might be appropriate for patients who don’t need the supervision of a doctor but aren’t ready to go home. The facilities generally provide round-the-clock nursing care. The amount of rehab varies based on the patient. There are more than 14,500 skilled nursing facilities in the United States, 12 times as many as hospitals offering rehab, so a nursing home may be the only option near you.

You can look for them through Medicare’s Care Compare website. (Read our previous guide to finding a good, well-staffed home to know how to assess the overall staffing.)

What if patients are too frail even for a nursing home?

They might need a long-term care hospital. Those specialize in patients who are in comas, on ventilators, and have acute medical conditions that require the presence of a physician. Patients stay at least four weeks, and some are there for months. Care Compare helps you search. There are fewer than 350 such hospitals.

I’m strong enough to go home. How do I receive therapy?

Many rehab hospitals offer outpatient therapy. You also can go to a clinic, or a therapist can come to you. You can hire a home health agency or find a therapist who takes your insurance and makes house calls. Your doctor or hospital may give you referrals. On Care Compare, home health agencies list whether they offer physical, occupational, or speech therapy. You can search for board-certified therapists on the American Physical Therapy Association’s website.

While undergoing rehab, patients sometimes move from hospital to nursing facility to home, often at the insistence of their insurers. Alice Bell, a senior specialist at the APTA, said patients should try to limit the number of transitions, for their own safety.

“Every time a patient moves from one setting to another,” she said, “they’re in a higher risk zone.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The post How To Find the Right Medical Rehab Services appeared first on kffhealthnews.org



Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

This article from KFF Health News provides a comprehensive, fact-based guide to rehabilitation therapy options and how to navigate insurance, care settings, and provider quality. It avoids ideological framing and presents information in a neutral, practical tone aimed at helping consumers make informed medical decisions. While it touches on Medicare and private insurance policies, it does so without political commentary or value judgments, and no partisan viewpoints or advocacy positions are evident. The focus remains on patient care, safety, and informed choice, supporting a nonpartisan, service-oriented approach to health reporting.

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Kaiser Health News

States Brace for Reversal of Obamacare Coverage Gains Under Trump’s Budget Bill

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kffhealthnews.org – Julie Appleby, KFF Health News – 2025-07-03 14:43:00


The tax and spending bill pushed by President Trump includes provisions that shorten ACA enrollment periods, increase paperwork, and raise premiums, threatening coverage gains from the Affordable Care Act. Particularly impacted are the 19 states running their own ACA exchanges, where automatic reenrollment would end, potentially causing 30-50% enrollment losses. Combined with the likely expiration of enhanced pandemic premium subsidies, premiums could rise 75% on average next year. Supporters cite fraud reduction, but many analysts warn these changes could push 4-6 million people out of Marketplace plans, increase the uninsured rate, and leave insurers with smaller, sicker pools and higher prices.


Shorter enrollment periods. More paperwork. Higher premiums. The sweeping tax and spending bill pushed by President Donald Trump includes provisions that would not only reshape people’s experience with the Affordable Care Act but, according to some policy analysts, also sharply undermine the gains in health insurance coverage associated with it.

The moves affect consumers and have particular resonance for the 19 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that run their own ACA exchanges.

Many of those states fear that the additional red tape — especially requirements that would end automatic reenrollment — would have an outsize impact on their policyholders. That’s because a greater percentage of people in those states use those rollovers versus shopping around each year, which is more commonly done by people in states that use the federal healthcare.gov marketplace.

“The federal marketplace always had a message of, ‘Come back in and shop,’ while the state-based markets, on average, have a message of, ‘Hey, here’s what you’re going to have next year, here’s what it will cost; if you like it, you don’t have to do anything,’” said Ellen Montz, who oversaw the federal ACA marketplace under the Biden administration as deputy administrator and director at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. She is now a managing director with the Manatt Health consulting group.

Millions — perhaps up to half of enrollees in some states — may lose or drop coverage as a result of that and other changes in the legislation combined with a new rule from the Trump administration and the likely expiration at year’s end of enhanced premium subsidies put in place during the covid-19 pandemic. Without an extension of those subsidies, which have been an important driver of Obamacare enrollment in recent years, premiums are expected to rise 75% on average next year. That’s starting to happen already, based on some early state rate requests for next year, which are hitting double digits.

“We estimate a minimum 30% enrollment loss, and, in the worst-case scenario, a 50% loss,” said Devon Trolley, executive director of Pennie, the ACA marketplace in Pennsylvania, which had 496,661 enrollees this year, a record.

Drops of that magnitude nationally, coupled with the expected loss of Medicaid coverage for millions more people under the legislation Trump calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” could undo inroads made in the nation’s uninsured rate, which dropped by about half from the time most of the ACA’s provisions went into effect in 2014, when it hovered around 14% to 15% of the population, to just over 8%, according to the most recent data.

Premiums would rise along with the uninsured rate, because older or sicker policyholders are more likely to try to jump enrollment hurdles, while those who rarely use coverage — and are thus less expensive — would not.

After a dramatic all-night session, House Republicans passed the bill, meeting the president’s July 4 deadline. Trump is expected to sign the measure on Independence Day. It would increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars and cut spending on a variety of programs, including Medicaid and nutrition assistance, to partly offset the cost of extending tax cuts put in place during the first Trump administration.

The administration and its supporters say the GOP-backed changes to the ACA are needed to combat fraud. Democrats and ACA supporters see this effort as the latest in a long history of Republican efforts to weaken or repeal Obamacare. Among other things, the legislation would end several changes put in place by the Biden administration that were credited with making it easier to sign up, such as lengthening the annual open enrollment period and launching a special program for very low-income people that essentially allows them to sign up year-round.

In addition, automatic reenrollment, used by more than 10 million people for 2025 ACA coverage, would end in the 2028 sign-up season. Instead, consumers would have to update their information, starting in August each year, before the close of open enrollment, which would end Dec. 15, a month earlier than currently.

That’s a key change to combat rising enrollment fraud, said Brian Blase, president of the conservative Paragon Health Institute, because it gets at what he calls the Biden era’s “lax verification requirements.”

He blames automatic reenrollment, coupled with the availability of zero-premium plans for people with lower incomes that qualify them for large subsidies, for a sharp uptick in complaints from insurers, consumers, and brokers about fraudulent enrollments in 2023 and 2024. Those complaints centered on consumers’ being enrolled in an ACA plan, or switched from one to another, without authorization, often by commission-seeking brokers.

In testimony to Congress on June 25, Blase wrote that “this simple step will close a massive loophole and significantly reduce improper enrollment and spending.”

States that run their own marketplaces, however, saw few, if any, such problems, which were confined mainly to the 31 states using the federal healthcare.gov.

The state-run marketplaces credit their additional security measures and tighter control over broker access than healthcare.gov for the relative lack of problems.

“If you look at California and the other states that have expanded their Medicaid programs, you don’t see that kind of fraud problem,” said Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California, the state’s Obamacare marketplace. “I don’t have a single case of a consumer calling Covered California saying, ‘I was enrolled without consent.’”

Such rollovers are common with other forms of health insurance, such as job-based coverage.

“By requiring everyone to come back in and provide additional information, and the fact that they can’t get a tax credit until they take this step, it is essentially making marketplace coverage the most difficult coverage to enroll in,” said Trolley at Pennie, 65% of whose policyholders were automatically reenrolled this year, according to KFF data. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

Federal data shows about 22% of federal sign-ups in 2024 were automatic-reenrollments, versus 58% in state-based plans. Besides Pennsylvania, the states that saw such sign-ups for more than 60% of enrollees include California, New York, Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia, according to KFF.

States do check income and other eligibility information for all enrollees — including those being automatically renewed, those signing up for the first time, and those enrolling outside the normal open enrollment period because they’ve experienced a loss of coverage or other life event or meet the rules for the low-income enrollment period.

“We have access to many data sources on the back end that we ping, to make sure nothing has changed. Most people sail through and are able to stay covered without taking any proactive step,” Altman said.

If flagged for mismatched data, applicants are asked for additional information. Under current law, “we have 90 days for them to have a tax credit while they submit paperwork,” Altman said.

That would change under the tax and spending plan before Congress, ending presumptive eligibility while a person submits the information.

A white paper written for Capital Policy Analytics, a Washington-based consultancy that specializes in economic analysis, concluded there appears to be little upside to the changes.

While “tighter verification can curb improper enrollments,” the additional paperwork, along with the expiration of higher premiums from the enhanced tax subsidies, “would push four to six million eligible people out of Marketplace plans, trading limited fraud savings for a surge in uninsurance,” wrote free market economists Ike Brannon and Anthony LoSasso.

“Insurers would be left with a smaller, sicker risk pool and heightened pricing uncertainty, making further premium increases and selective market exits [by insurers] likely,” they wrote.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The post States Brace for Reversal of Obamacare Coverage Gains Under Trump’s Budget Bill appeared first on kffhealthnews.org



Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content presents a critique of Republican-led changes to the Affordable Care Act, emphasizing potential negative impacts such as increased premiums, reduced enrollment, and the erosion of coverage gains made under the ACA. It highlights the perspective of policy analysts and state officials who express concern over these measures, while also presenting conservative viewpoints, particularly those focusing on fraud reduction. Overall, the tone and framing lean toward protecting the ACA and its expansions, which traditionally aligns with Center-Left media analysis.

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Kaiser Health News

Dual Threats From Trump and GOP Imperil Nursing Homes and Their Foreign-Born Workers

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kffhealthnews.org – Jordan Rau, KFF Health News – 2025-06-26 04:00:00


In Alexandria, Virginia, Rev. Donald Goodness, 92, is cared for by many foreign-born nurses like Jackline Conteh from Sierra Leone, who vigilantly manages his celiac disease needs. The long-term care industry relies heavily on immigrants, with 28% of direct care workers being foreign-born. However, President Trump’s 2024 immigration crackdown, including rescinded protections and revoked work permits for refugees, threatens staffing levels. Coupled with proposed Medicaid spending cuts, nursing homes face worsening shortages and quality challenges. Many immigrant caregivers fear deportation, risking a crisis in elder care as demand rises with America’s aging population.


In a top-rated nursing home in Alexandria, Virginia, the Rev. Donald Goodness is cared for by nurses and aides from various parts of Africa. One of them, Jackline Conteh, a naturalized citizen and nurse assistant from Sierra Leone, bathes and helps dress him most days and vigilantly intercepts any meal headed his way that contains gluten, as Goodness has celiac disease.

“We are full of people who come from other countries,” Goodness, 92, said about Goodwin House Alexandria’s staff. Without them, the retired Episcopal priest said, “I would be, and my building would be, desolate.”

The long-term health care industry is facing a double whammy from President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants and the GOP’s proposals to reduce Medicaid spending. The industry is highly dependent on foreign workers: More than 800,000 immigrants and naturalized citizens comprise 28% of direct care employees at home care agencies, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other long-term care companies.

But in January, the Trump administration rescinded former President Joe Biden’s 2021 policy that protected health care facilities from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. The administration’s broad immigration crackdown threatens to drastically reduce the number of current and future workers for the industry. “People may be here on a green card, and they are afraid ICE is going to show up,” said Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofits that care for older adults.

Existing staffing shortages and quality-of-care problems would be compounded by other policies pushed by Trump and the Republican-led Congress, according to nursing home officials, resident advocates, and academic experts. Federal spending cuts under negotiation may strip nursing homes of some of their largest revenue sources by limiting ways states leverage Medicaid money and making it harder for new nursing home residents to retroactively qualify for Medicaid. Care for 6 in 10 residents is paid for by Medicaid, the state-federal health program for poor or disabled Americans.

“We are facing the collision of two policies here that could further erode staffing in nursing homes and present health outcome challenges,” said Eric Roberts, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

The industry hasn’t recovered from covid-19, which killed more than 200,000 long-term care facility residents and workers and led to massive staff attrition and turnover. Nursing homes have struggled to replace licensed nurses, who can find better-paying jobs at hospitals and doctors’ offices, as well as nursing assistants, who can earn more working at big-box stores or fast-food joints. Quality issues that preceded the pandemic have expanded: The percentage of nursing homes that federal health inspectors cited for putting residents in jeopardy of immediate harm or death has risen alarmingly from 17% in 2015 to 28% in 2024.

In addition to seeking to reduce Medicaid spending, congressional Republicans have proposed shelving the biggest nursing home reform in decades: a Biden-era rule mandating minimum staffing levels that would require most of the nation’s nearly 15,000 nursing homes to hire more workers.

The long-term care industry expects demand for direct care workers to burgeon with an influx of aging baby boomers needing professional care. The Census Bureau has projected the number of people 65 and older would grow from 63 million this year to 82 million in 2050.

In an email, Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the agency “is committed to supporting a strong, stable long-term care workforce” and “continues to work with states and providers to ensure quality care for older adults and individuals with disabilities.” In a separate email, Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said foreigners wanting to work as caregivers “need to do that by coming here the legal way” but did not address the effect on the long-term care workforce of deportations of classes of authorized immigrants.

Goodwin Living, a faith-based nonprofit, runs three retirement communities in northern Virginia for people who live independently, need a little assistance each day, have memory issues, or require the availability of around-the-clock nurses. It also operates a retirement community in Washington, D.C. Medicare rates Goodwin House Alexandria as one of the best-staffed nursing homes in the country. Forty percent of the organization’s 1,450 employees are foreign-born and are either seeking citizenship or are already naturalized, according to Lindsay Hutter, a Goodwin spokesperson.

“As an employer, we see they stay on with us, they have longer tenure, they are more committed to the organization,” said Rob Liebreich, Goodwin’s president and CEO.

Jackline Conteh spent much of her youth shuttling between Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ghana to avoid wars and tribal conflicts. Her mother was killed by a stray bullet in her home country of Liberia, Conteh said. “She was sitting outside,” Conteh, 56, recalled in an interview.

Conteh was working as a nurse in a hospital in Sierra Leone in 2009 when she learned of a lottery for visas to come to the United States. She won, though she couldn’t afford to bring her husband and two children along at the time. After she got a nursing assistant certification, Goodwin hired her in 2012.

Conteh said taking care of elders is embedded in the culture of African families. When she was 9, she helped feed and dress her grandmother, a job that rotated among her and her sisters. She washed her father when he was dying of prostate cancer. Her husband joined her in the United States in 2017; she cares for him because he has heart failure.

“Nearly every one of us from Africa, we know how to care for older adults,” she said.

Her daughter is now in the United States, while her son is still in Africa. Conteh said she sends money to him, her mother-in-law, and one of her sisters.

In the nursing home where Goodness and 89 other residents live, Conteh helps with daily tasks like dressing and eating, checks residents’ skin for signs of swelling or sores, and tries to help them avoid falling or getting disoriented. Of 102 employees in the building, broken up into eight residential wings called “small houses” and a wing for memory care, at least 72 were born abroad, Hutter said.

Donald Goodness grew up in Rochester, New York, and spent 25 years as rector of The Church of the Ascension in New York City, retiring in 1997. He and his late wife moved to Alexandria to be closer to their daughter, and in 2011 they moved into independent living at the Goodwin House. In 2023 he moved into one of the skilled nursing small houses, where Conteh started caring for him.

“I have a bad leg and I can’t stand on it very much, or I’d fall over,” he said. “She’s in there at 7:30 in the morning, and she helps me bathe.” Goodness said Conteh is exacting about cleanliness and will tell the housekeepers if his room is not kept properly.

Conteh said Goodness was withdrawn when he first arrived. “He don’t want to come out, he want to eat in his room,” she said. “He don’t want to be with the other people in the dining room, so I start making friends with him.”

She showed him a photo of Sierra Leone on her phone and told him of the weather there. He told her about his work at the church and how his wife did laundry for the choir. The breakthrough, she said, came one day when he agreed to lunch with her in the dining room. Long out of his shell, Goodness now sits on the community’s resident council and enjoys distributing the mail to other residents on his floor.

“The people that work in my building become so important to us,” Goodness said.

While Trump’s 2024 election campaign focused on foreigners here without authorization, his administration has broadened to target those legally here, including refugees who fled countries beset by wars or natural disasters. This month, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the work permits for migrants and refugees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who arrived under a Biden-era program.

“I’ve just spent my morning firing good, honest people because the federal government told us that we had to,” Rachel Blumberg, president of the Toby & Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences of Boca Raton, a Florida retirement community, said in a video posted on LinkedIn. “I am so sick of people saying that we are deporting people because they are criminals. Let me tell you, they are not all criminals.”

At Goodwin House, Conteh is fearful for her fellow immigrants. Foreign workers at Goodwin rarely talk about their backgrounds. “They’re scared,” she said. “Nobody trusts anybody.” Her neighbors in her apartment complex fled the U.S. in December and returned to Sierra Leone after Trump won the election, leaving their children with relatives.

“If all these people leave the United States, they go back to Africa or to their various countries, what will become of our residents?” Conteh asked. “What will become of our old people that we’re taking care of?”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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The post Dual Threats From Trump and GOP Imperil Nursing Homes and Their Foreign-Born Workers appeared first on kffhealthnews.org



Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content primarily highlights concerns about the impact of restrictive immigration policies and Medicaid spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers on the long-term care industry. It emphasizes the importance of immigrant workers in healthcare, the challenges that staffing shortages pose to patient care, and the potential negative effects of GOP policy proposals. The tone is critical of these policies while sympathetic toward immigrant workers and advocates for maintaining or increasing government support for healthcare funding. The framing aligns with a center-left perspective, focusing on social welfare, immigrant rights, and concern about the consequences of conservative economic and immigration policies without descending into partisan rhetoric.

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