Overnight Healthcare: GOP field faces new pressure on ObamaCare

ObamaCare’s victory at the Supreme Court is putting new pressure on Republican presidential candidates to map out a replacement to the healthcare law — a task that has eluded the party for more than five years.

With President Obama’s law twice affirmed by the nation’s high court, congressional Republicans now say a victory in 2016 is their best chance to tear down the statute and replace it with a GOP-favored alternative.

“I definitely think there will be pressure on these guys to put something out there,” said Lanhee Chen, the policy director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “They will need to have a plan.”

{mosads}However, few of the party’s dozen 2016 hopefuls have thus far offered concrete details about what their alternative to the law would look like.

Chen said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are “arguably further along,” in their planning, a point echoed by other experts.

Rubio’s plan includes giving tax credits to people to help them afford coverage and setting up high-risk insurance pools for people with pre-existing conditions. His plan is still in the form of an op-ed, and has not been fleshed out with details like the size of the credits and how it would be paid for.

Jindal’s plan — outlined last year in a 23-page document — centers on providing $100 billion over ten years in block grants to states that come up with their own innovative healthcare proposals. Read more here.

WHITE HOUSE RELAXES MEDICAL CODING RULE: The Obama administration announced on Monday that it will give doctors a 12-month transition period related to new medical codes that have drawn criticism from some Republican lawmakers as a needless expansion of bureaucracy.

The deadline for doctors to adopt a new set of codes that identify medical conditions and procedures is Oct. 1. They are known as ICD-10, for the tenth version of the International Classification of Diseases.

Doctors and others have raised concerns about the time and money it takes to switch over to the new system. Because the codes are linked to doctors’ payments, there have also been concerns that claims could be denied over confusion about them.

In a move aimed at addressing some of these concerns, the administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced on Monday that for 12 months, Medicare claims will not be denied because doctors used the wrong code, as long as the code is in the correct broad category. Read more here.

WATCHDOG WARNS MEDICARE DOCTORS ARE OVERPRESCRIBING: A Medicare program designed to offset costs at hospitals serving the poor is likely prompting doctors to over-prescribe drugs to their patients, according to a new federal audit.

Hospitals that participate in Medicare’s 340B Drug Pricing Program are either prescribing more drugs or more expensive drugs to their patients compared to hospitals that don’t qualify for the program, investigators found.

Spending is about $144 per patient at the 340B hospitals — more than twice the $60-per-patient spending at hospitals without the program.

And the differences in treatments could not be “readily explained by hospital characteristics or patients’ health status,” the report finds.

The federal investigators, who are part of the Government Accountability Office, urged Congress to take action because the health officials don’t have the power to lower the incentives. Read more here. 

Tuesday’s schedule:

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold a subcommittee hearing on healthcare challenges for small businesses.

The World Health Organization will release an independent audit of its response to the global Ebola outbreak.

State by state

Colorado’s push against teenage pregnancies is a startling success

NC legislators want Medicaid reform before expansion

What we’re reading

Medicare expected to pay for end-of-life talks

The real story of ObamaCare’s birth

Understanding different measures of abortion

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McConnell: ObamaCare to blame for healthcare consolidation

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