Doug Geinzer | 3rd Annual Inspired Excellence in Health Care Awards Gala | Las Vegas HEALS – Video

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Doug Geinzer | 3rd Annual Inspired Excellence in Health Care Awards Gala | Las Vegas HEALS
Las Vegas HEALS honored six local physicians for their outstanding contributions to the community as Las Vegas continues to position itself as a world-class destination for health care services....

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Doug Geinzer | 3rd Annual Inspired Excellence in Health Care Awards Gala | Las Vegas HEALS - Video

Deconstructing the decline of health-care spending

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Health care inflation has gone down every single year since the law [the Affordable Care Act] passed, so that we now have the lowest increase in health care costs in 50 yearswhich is saving us about $180 billion in reduced overall costs to the federal government and in the Medicare program.

President Obama, news conference, Nov. 5, 2014

In his post-election news conference, President Obama hit on a theme that we have explored before that the Affordable Care Act has led to lower increases in health care costs. But the evidence for this is still rather fuzzy.

Lets deconstruct the presidents statement.

First, note that the president simply notes that growth in health-care spendinghas gone down every year since the law passed, thus cleverly avoiding a causal connection. But he certainly implies it, and thats the message most viewers might have received.

But as we have said, the evidence for a direct connection is fuzzy and certainly in dispute. The White House earlier this year touted a report by the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Servicesas showing slow health-care spending growth continued in 2013. But heres how the actuaries actually worded their assessment:

Health spending growth for 2013 is projected to have remained slow at 3.6 percent due to the modest economic recovery, the impacts of sequestration and continued slow growth in the utilization of Medicare services, and continued increases in cost-sharing requirements for the privately insured.

Note that there is little mention of the impact of the Affordable Care Act on the data. In fact, despite the presidents claim of a decrease of every year, the White Houses own chart shows that the 2013 estimate represents a slight uptick from 2012, when adjusted for inflation and population. As the White House report puts it, the three years since 2010 will have recorded the three slowest health-care spending growth rates since record keeping began in 1960. That is impressive, but it is not the same as health costs going down every single year since the law was passed in 2010.

Heres the White House chart:

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Deconstructing the decline of health-care spending

New rules for health care, same uncertainty on costs

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CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Henry Passapera, co-owner of P&R Trading Inc. in East Rutherford, said health coverage for his 12 workers rose only slightly.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, employers in New Jersey and nationwide will soon have new decisions to make about their workers' health coverage. Starting Saturday, small employers will get a chance to buy coverage online through a federal marketplace, and starting Jan. 1, large employers will face penalties if they don't offer affordable coverage.

These changes may not have a huge effect on New Jersey's health insurance landscape, however, because most large employers already offer coverage, and small employers may find better options outside the federal exchange. But there are still questions about the Affordable Care Act's long-term effects on employers' health-care costs, which for years have been among their most significant expenses.

"It's too early to tell what the full impact will be on pricing," said Linda Schwimmer, vice president of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, an organization that works on issues of safety, quality and cost-containment. "There are still a lot of problems with our health care system that the ACA is prompting us to try to work on." She said that as cost-cutting measures work their way into the health system, employers may find their costs easing.

Health coverage costs have been rising at a slower pace in the past few years compared with the late 1990s and early 2000s though it's not clear if the Affordable Care Act is part of the reason. The Kaiser Family Foundation recently said that the cost of employer-sponsored health coverage rose 3 percent this year, compared with last year. But deductibles have been rising at a faster clip, meaning that employees pay more of the cost when they get sick.

A recent survey by the New Jersey Business and Industry Association found that the increases in employer health-coverage costs this year varied by the company's size. A total of 583 of the association's member businesses responded and the survey found that the largest employers in the state those with more than 250 employees reported an increase of 7.3 percent this year, compared with a whopping 24 percent for businesses with two dozen or fewer workers.

At P&R Trading in East Rutherford, premiums rose slightly when the company, which buys and sells aircraft parts, renewed its coverage in the spring. The company has about a dozen workers.

"My rates didn't go up very much, so we're OK," said co-owner Henry Passapera. "We hope it will continue that way."

One of the company's workers, in his 30s, isn't on the company plan because he found it cheaper to find his coverage on the individual insurance marketplace set up through the Affordable Care Act. P&R subsidizes the cost of his premium, which is around $300 a month.

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New rules for health care, same uncertainty on costs

Health care sector sees silver lining in U.S. tax inversion rules

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Investors and bankers have been lamenting the potential death of large cross-border health care mergers since the U.S. Treasury Department announced in late September that it would curtail the tax breaks from international deals designed to give U.S. companies a legal home in a low-tax country.

But now bankers and small-cap investors see a silver lining: Instead of quashing mergers and acquisitions altogether, the Treasurys proposal on tax inversions may pull dealmaking onshore.

Companies, particularly in health care, that were looking to do big cross-border transactions now are refocusing on small and mid-cap U.S.-based deals, bankers say.

Fundamental M&A should accelerate in the U.S., especially in respect of mid-cap biotechnology and specialty pharmaceutical companies, said Michael Meyers, head of investment banking at Los Angeles-based T.R. Winston & Co.

Small acquisitions have traditionally been a staple of the health care industry as biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies try to add the most promising new drugs in development to their pipelines. But in 2010, the tax advantages Canada-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. and Jazz Pharmaceuticals of Palo Alto, Calif., obtained through inversion deals set off an arms race for similar benefits.

Now many bankers and investors expect companies that had to cancel their inversion deals, such as Abbvie Inc. and Shire Plc, to go back to basics.

Pfizer Inc. and other companies that have not done an inversion deal are under more pressure to grow through acquisitions to compete with those that have a lower tax rate, several investment bankers and investors told Reuters. During Pfizers third-quarter earnings call, executives said the company would assess deals on a case-by-case basis.

Likely targets, investors and bankers said, are companies with one or two promising new products, such as Avanir Pharmaceuticals Inc., which has an Alzheimers drug under patent; San Diego-based Neurocrine Biosciences Inc., which has partnered with Abbvie on an endometriosis treatment; and Puma Biotechnology Inc., which is developing a breast cancer drug.

All three companies are rumored to be the object of takeover deals in the next few months. None responded to requests for comment.

On Sept. 22, the U.S. Treasury Department announced a series of steps designed to make inversions more difficult and potentially less rewarding.

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Health care sector sees silver lining in U.S. tax inversion rules

Health care overhaul doubts ease for insurers

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) What a difference a year makes.

The nation's biggest health insurers entered last fall cautious about a major coverage expansion initiated by the health care overhaul, the federal law that aims to cover millions of uninsured people.

Investors and company executives were worried because they didn't know how expensive new customers from the overhaul would be for insurers. They also were concerned about added costs from the law and funding cuts to government-sponsored Medicare Advantage plans, a key growth area.

But a year later, these challenges are starting to appear manageable, and investors see much less uncertainty ahead for the sector. Insurers have cut costs and raised prices to help mitigate added expenses from the law. They've also added new business.

As a result, Aetna Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurer WellPoint Inc. all posted third quarter results that trumped Wall Street estimates and raised their forecasts for 2014. Shares of those companies the nation's three largest health insurers have all repeatedly hit all-time highs this year, their growth easily outpacing broader trading indexes.

"People are starting to understand that the 2015 landscape is a little less harrowing than 2014," said Jennifer Lynch, an analyst who covers the industry for BMO Capital Markets.

The optimism represents a stark contrast to a year ago. Late last year, the overhaul's state-based public health insurance exchanges debuted with the promise to give insurers new customers by making it easier for people to buy coverage, sometimes with help from income-based tax credits.

That new business represents a small slice of total enrollment for most insurers, but it generated an outsized dose of anxiety. Many of those new customers had gone years with no insurance coverage or regular health care, and a glitch-plagued debut of the exchanges created more ambiguity over how expensive the customer base would be.

Plus, the overhaul also heaps additional costs onto the balance sheets of insurers, including an industry-wide tax that is non-deductible. And the law changed how they provide coverage by preventing them from excluding customers with expensive medical conditions.

But the companies seem to be positioned to weather the challenges.

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Health care overhaul doubts ease for insurers

Local health care workers trained at special Ebola seminar

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LOS ANGELES (KABC) --

One wrong move can turn into a deadly mistake for anyone treating an Ebola patient.

Registered nurse Peter Sidhu from Kaiser Woodland Hills and other local healthcare workers learned step-by-step how to protect themselves at a specialized training seminar on Friday.

Included in one of the demonstrations - how to properly remove contaminated gloves before changing into a new pair and sanitizing them before touching one's head gear.

Nurses are on the front lines.

"Nurses are actually making contact with the patients when they're in the most active stage of the disease, and that's the most dangerous," said Dr. Patrick Courneya with Kaiser Foundation Hospitals.

The safety session, which is available for health care practitioners to review online, is a collaboration between Kaiser Permanente, its nurses unions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Service Employees International Union and the Union of Health Care Professionals.

"Knowing how things unfolded in Dallas, learning lessons from that experience and making sure we transmit that knowledge to everybody who's going to be responsible for helping patients who might have Ebola," Courneya said.

Organizers say this event is not the end of the discussion but the beginning, because besides protection suits, the most important weapon against this disease is knowledge.

"So we can be armed, so we will know what to do," said Deborah Montgomery, who works in an emergency room. She said fear and misinformation is what causes mistakes, and seminars like this give her confidence.

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Local health care workers trained at special Ebola seminar