NYBGH has Renamed and Relocated!

New York Business Group on Health has expanded to help employers across the northeast improve health care. As part of the expansion, the organization has been renamed to Northeast Business Group on Health (NEBGH). The new and improved NEBGH blog can be found at www.nebgh.org/blog, where all new posts created after November 22, 2010 will be available.

A press release announcing the name change is available by clicking here.

Please also visit us at NEBGH.org.

New York Employer Coverage Survey Released

A new report on employer-sponsored health insurance, released this week by the New York State Health Foundation, indicates that the percentage of New Yorkers covered by their employer has fallen over the last decade, from 69% in 2001 to 58% in 2009.  This percentage is, furthermore, slightly lower than the national average of 65%.  The percentage of employers actually offering coverage, though, remained steady at 70% over the same period.  Decreases in take-up are attributed to tighter eligibility rules, increased cost-shifting, and limited coverage choices.

The complete report, "Decade of Decline: A Survey of Employer Health Coverage in New York State" can be accessed by clicking here.

CMS Launches Innovations Center and Announces New York's Inclusion in an Eight-State Medical Home Demonstration

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the opening of its new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovations and the launch of demonstration projects, one of which will include New York State.

The CMS Innovations Center was created by the Affordable Care Act in hopes to jump start innovation in health care payment and delivery reform through the promotion of quality and coordinated care. The permanent center will be guided by a diverse stakeholder group consisting of members from a broad range of the health care marketplace that includes hospitals, physicians, consumers, payers, states, employers, advocates, and other federal agencies.

In short, the Innovation Center seeks to promote better care for individuals, develop models to coordinate care to improve health outcomes, and create community care models. In addition to these specific focuses of the Innovation Center, CMS also announced the launch of three care coordination projects: Expansion of the Multi-Payer Advanced Primary Care Practice Demonstration (in which New York will participate), the Federally Qualified Health Center Advanced Primary Care Practice Demonstration, and the launch of the Medicaid Health Home State Plan Option. There will be an additional $1 million in grants provided to states for demonstration projects they design.

To learn more about the CMS Innovations Center visit http://www.innovations.cms.gov/

NYBGH Annual Meeting Tomorrow! Uwe Reinhardt Giving Keynote

Please join us for the NYBGH 2010 Annual Meeting tomorrow, November 10th from 4:00 to 7:30pm.  The business portion of the meeting runs until 6:00pm, with cocktails until 7:30pm.  Registration begins at 3:45pm.

The keynote speaker is Uwe E. Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy and Professor of Economics at Princeton University.  His speech is titled, "The Accountable Care Act: Why Have It? What Next?"

The event is being held at Con Edison, located at 4 Irving Place (at 14th Street) in Manhattan.  To register, please visit www.nybgh.org. 

NEJM Article Examines Health Care in the Mid-Term Election

A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) examines various public polls assessing the public's mood on health reform and how it might affect the results of Tuesday's mid-term Congressional election.  Robert Blendon and John Benson of the Harvard School of Public Health argue that not only will health reform affect how individuals vote, but also that Tuesday's outcome could have a significant impact on the rest of health reform implementation. 

The authors show that Americans' view of health reform remained relatively stable before and after reform's passage.  Additionally, they put forth the following six assertions:

• Americans today generally have very negative views about the general direction of the country, which can be seen in their inclination to not vote for incumbent candidates
• Health care is an important but secondary issue in the election, with jobs and the federal budget deficit being at the forefront
• More than seven months since reform's passage, a majority of Americans neither support or oppose the package; however, 38% of registered votes believe that the US economy will be worse off than better off (21%) because of the health reform law
• 41% of registered votes think that most provisions of the law should be repealed and replaced with a completely different set of proposals
• Most registered voters (73%) who intend to vote for a Democrat support the reform law, while 80% of registered votes who intend to vote for a Republican oppose the law
• Polling results indicate that there is considerable political uncertainty about the future of the health reform law

The complete article can be found by clicking here.

Health Information Exchange Decoded

A recent post by Margalit Gur-Arie on The Health Care Blog provides a beginner's guide to the concept of health information exchange.  Following its introduction, the post describes both the centralized and federated models in addition to explaining how the HITECH Act has and will continue to impact the field.

Click here to access the full post.

Health Reform Lawsuit to Move Forward

Yesterday a federal judge in Florida ruled that multi-state challenges against the individual mandate and Medicaid expansion under the new health reform law can move forward.  Florida Northern District Judge Roger Vinson did not rule that he agrees with the assertion that the law is unconstitutional, but only that it won't be dismissed outright, as the Obama administration had requested.  However, four other counts related to taxation and requirements that states enforce the law were thrown out by Vinson.

The challengers argue that the individual mandates seeks to regulate "inactivity" because it would penalize people for not buying health insurance.  In his ruling, Vinson appears open to this line of reasoning, quoting a 16 year old Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report concluding that "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action.  The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States."  Though, Vinson added a disclaimer in which he adds, "Of course, to say that something is 'novel' and 'unprecedented' does not necessarily mean that it is 'unconstitutional' and 'improper.'  There may be a first time for anything.  But, at this stage of the case, the plaintiffs have most definitely states a plausible claim with respect to this cause of action."

The White House, though, remains optimistic that the law will hold.  The administration's response, via The White House blog, can be found by clicking here.

Vinson's ruling can be found by clicking here.
The story, as reported by The Hill, can be found here.