Modern Healthcare reports that

Congress appears unlikely to delay the health insurance tax next year. If that happens, Medicare Advantage plans would see the biggest impact, analysts and insurers say. [The insurers participating in the FEHBP also get whacked too.]

On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced a suspension of the tax, known as the HIT, through 2021. The tax was in place for 2018, suspended in 2019 and is due to take effect again in 2020. 

But as House lawmakers unrolled their proposal for another delay, senior congressional staff from both chambers and parties said they don’t think it’s likely to move before insurers start setting their ACA exchange rates next year.

This development is quite disappointing to the FEHBlog. As the FEHBlog has noted from time to time, the Affordable Care Act taxed everything that moved. Its most counterproductive taxes are those imposed on healthcare services and premiums, like this one, as those taxes significantly raise the cost of healthcare for consumers. In other words, the taxes make healthcare less affordable. Why Congress simply can’t repeal them is a mystery.

On the encouraging side, Becker’s Hospital Review reports that

Limited trust has existed between payers and providers thanks to disagreements over networks, prior authorization and price variation; however, now is the time to change this dynamic, executives from UnitedHealth Group, Anthem and Permanente Medical Group wrote in a JAMA opinion piece.

“Relationships should change from being based on contracts to relationships built on a shared covenant to patients and to system improvement,” the authors concluded. “The next decade could be transformational, or it could be a missed opportunity. It is the responsibility of each person and organization in the U.S. healthcare system to make transformation real — in care delivery, in payment, and most powerfully, in relationships.”

Amen to that.

Earlier this week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced updates to the Hospital Compare website. Although the website suggests that the site is designed for Medicare, the information is useful for anyone who is considering hospital care.  Healthcare Dive explains why the American Hospital Association is not a fan of the Hospital Compare website. In the FEHBlog’s opinion, your best bet if possible is to speak with professionals, especially nurses, who work at local hospitals where your admitting doctor is credentialed.