This week the 38th annual JP Morgan healthcare conference is being held in San Francisco. Fierce Healthcare’s reporters provide us with an interesting pastiche of conference presentations.

Beckers Hospital CFO Review reports on a recent Health Affairs analysis on the value of bundled payment arrangements.

Twenty studies reviewed show that the bundled payment models maintained or improved quality while lowering costs for lower extremity joint replacement. This didn’t hold true for other procedures and conditions. Study others added that a significant number of studies didn’t find any effect on healthcare spending, although this varied by clinical episode.

Buyer beware.

The FEHBlog wishes to caveat a point made in his December 2019 “Santa Claus” post. The post accurately explained that Congress has repealed the Affordable Care Act’s medical device, health insurer and high cost plan excise taxes (the latter colloquially known as the ACA’s Cadillac tax.) Katie Keith points out in the Health Affairs blog that

Repeal of the health insurance tax would not take effect until 2021, meaning the tax—which has already been built in to many premiums for the 2020 plan year—will remain in effect for 2020. The Cadillac tax and medical device tax are repealed beginning in 2020.