Tuesday’s Tidbits

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19, Federal employment benefits, OPM, Telehealth, U.S. Healthcare–
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Happy National Employee Benefits Day, an occasion created by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.

From the Capitol Hill front, Roll Call reports

The week is still young. But prospects for getting a bipartisan supplemental aid package for pandemic response efforts to President Joe Biden’s desk before a two-week recess seem increasingly remote.

Without a deal on amendments Republicans want to offer, the Senate on Tuesday rejected a procedural motion needed to begin debate on the bill, which would provide $10 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services to buy more therapeutics, vaccines and testing supplies and prepare for future virus variants.

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the lead GOP negotiator, said the underlying bill will have enough bipartisan support to pass if leaders can agree on an amendment process, but it’s an open question whether it will get done before the recess.

From the Omicron and siblings front, the Wall Street Journal reports

The Omicron BA.2 variant is increasing its share of U.S. cases and putting particular pressure on parts of the Northeast, where wastewater readings and Covid-19 cases have ticked upward again from low levels.

Recorded Covid-19 cases remain low nationally and hospitals are treating the smallest number of Covid-19 patients after any surge. Places where cases are rising, including New York, are reporting relatively small increases from recent troughs. The mixed signals are prompting officials to warn that BA.2 will likely lead to more viral transmission, but also hope among public-health experts that warming weather and built-up immunity in the population are muting the variant’s impact.

“There are certainly some big factors that are in our favor right now compared to the situation back in November and December,” said Bruce Y. Lee, professor of health policy and management at the City University of New York School of Public Health.

From the White House, the Administration announced

  • A “whole of government” effort to prevent, detect, and treat long Covid. Long Covid is a topic at the OPM AHIP FEHB carrier conference to be held virtually on April 27 and 28, 2022.
  • A regulatory fix to the so-called family glitch in the Affordable Care Act. The family glitch that this fix addresses stems from the fact that the ACA does not require employers to make contributions to family member coverage. “Should today’s proposed rule be finalized, family members of workers who are offered affordable self-only coverage but unaffordable family coverage may qualify for premium tax credits to buy ACA coverage.” In the FEHBlog’s personal experience, the unaddressed family glitch is that that small employers (generally under 50 employees) must pay for each family member’s coverage on an age rated basis instead of the plus one or plus and family rates that large employers are permitted to use. Pre-ACA, all employers could use the bucket approach to family member rating. The proposed regulation won’t fix that problem.

agencies (as described in section 3502(1) of title 44, United States Code, except for the agencies described in section 3502(5) of title 44, United States Code) with responsibilities related to Americans’ access to health coverage shall review agency actions to identify ways to continue to expand the availability of affordable health coverage, to improve the quality of coverage, to strengthen benefits, and to help more Americans enroll in quality health coverage.  As part of this review, the heads of such agencies shall examine the following:

(a)  policies or practices that make it easier for all consumers to enroll in and retain coverage, understand their coverage options, and select appropriate coverage;

(b)  policies or practices that strengthen benefits and improve access to healthcare providers;

(c)  policies or practices that improve the comprehensiveness of coverage and protect consumers from low-quality coverage;

(d)  policies or practices that expand eligibility and lower costs for coverage in the ACA Marketplaces, Medicaid, Medicare, and other programs;

(e)  policies or practices that help improve linkages between the healthcare system and other stakeholders to address health-related needs; and

(f)  policies or practices that help reduce the burden of medical debt on households.

These are interesting objectives, but FEHB typically is not considered to be a employee benefit program and not a government health program.

From the healthcare business front

  • Beckers Hospital Review tells us “Walmart Health will open five new clinics in Florida, according to an April 5 press release.” Healthcare Dive offers a deep dive into Walmart’s healthcare efforts in the Sunshine State.

UnitedHealth Group’s Optum and Change Healthcare have further extended their merger agreement to Dec. 31. The extension comes ahead of a two-week trial to determine the deal’s fate.

The Department of Justice sued to block the merger in late February, alleging that the combination could allow UnitedHealth to get a leg up on its competitors in the insurance space. The deal was first announced in January 2021 and is valued at $8 billion in cash and $5 billion in debt.

The trial is set to begin on Aug. 1.

“The extended agreement reflects our firm belief in the potential of our combination to improve healthcare and in our commitment to contesting the meritless legal challenge to this merger,” the companies said in a joint statement Tuesday.

From the tidbits department

  • Shatterproof offers alcohol awareness resources in recognition of April being Alcohol Awareness Month.
  • Per Health Day, “Significantly higher average body mass index (BMI) and obesity prevalence rates were seen among U.S. adults during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study published online April 4 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.” The complete journal article is available here.
  • The same preventive medicine journal also offers an article on mortality rates of childbearing aged women in our country. “Given the high correlation between pregnancy-related mortality and all-cause mortality at the state level, addressing the structural factors that shape mortality risks may have the greatest likelihood of improving women’s health outcomes across the life course.”
  • The HHS Inspector General has created a website on telehealth.

The Office of Personnel Management last week offered guidance to agencies on how they should implement the recently enacted benefit providing federal workers with up to two weeks of paid bereavement leave following the death of a child.

The new leave was adopted as part of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Biden last December.

In a memo to agency heads, OPM Director Kiran Ahuja wrote that although each agency is responsible for its own implementation of the new benefit, her agency wants to ensure that it is provided to employees across government “in an equitable and uniform way.”