Washington’s Insurance Commissioner Rolls Back Federal Attempt to Expand Access to Short-Term Health Plans
On October 17, 2018, the Office of the Insurance Commissioner (“OIC”) adopted a final rule that defines minimum standards for short-term limited-duration health insurance plans (“short-term plans”) in Washington State and rejects federal efforts to expand their availability. Short-term plans are
Angle v Board of Dentistry, No. A162472, decided by the Oregon Court of Appeals on October 17, 2018, is a statutory interpretation case that may inform how dentists respond to requests for information from the Oregon Board of Dentistry.
ORS 679.170(6) provides that no person shall “fail to respond” to a written request from the Board of Dentistry for information. Does a “nonresponsive” reply count as a failure to respond? In this case, the Oregon Court of Appeals decides that just saying something is not sufficient to comply with ORS 679.170(6). Instead, responses must be responsive. According to the court, telling the board to go fly a kite or writing a letter about the history of Rome will not pass muster. However, a “curt and not overly helpful” response may work.
Continue Reading Was the Response Responsive Enough? The Oregon Court of Appeals Weighs In On “Failure to Respond” to the Board of Dentistry
The Oregon Division of Financial Regulation (the “Division”) recently issued a bulletin clarifying Oregon law and guidance applicable to association health plans (“AHPs”), which are multiple employer welfare arrangements (“MEWAs”) under ERISA. In Bulletin No. DFR 2018-07 (the “Bulletin”), the Division declined to adopt the more flexible criteria established by the recent U.S. Department of
On August 1, 2018, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a final rule that allows individuals to purchase short-term limited-duration health plans. Under the rule, short-term health plans can span an initial period of less than 12 months, with renewals and extensions capped at 36 months. Under the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), lower-grade
On July, 23, 2018 a three-judge panel in the Ninth Circuit issued a decision in Obidi v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (Case No. 17-55539), holding that a class-action suit against Wal-Mart and FirstSight Vision Services, Inc., a vision-only health care plan, can proceed on the theory that the defendants violated various California consumer protection laws by advertising “Independent Doctors of Optometry” that were, in fact, controlled by Wal-Mart and FirstSight. Though the decision is a narrow one (addressing only whether the plaintiffs have standing to sue), its reasoning could be relevant for how retail clinics and other corporate entities structure their relationships with physicians and other licensees to comply with state corporate practice of medicine (“CPOM”) rules.
Background of the Case
Wal-Mart stores across the country include on-site “Vision Centers” that offer basic eye exams, contacts, and prescription glasses. In California, Wal-Mart is registered as an optician and leases space in its stores to FirstSight, a licensed vision health plan. FirstSight, in turn, subleases this space to individual optometrists who charge patients directly. Wal-Mart and FirstSight advertised that the Vision Centers were staffed by “Independent Doctors of Optometry.” A former patient filed a putative class-action suit alleging Wal-Mart and FirstSight violated California’s Unfair Competition Law because (a) the defendants falsely advertised that the optometrists were “independent” and (b) the business arrangement between Wal-Mart and FirstSight was an unlawful relationship between an optometrist and an eyeglass retailer.
The plaintiff alleged that she would not have purchased an eye exam if she had known that the optometrist was not “independent.” The Ninth Circuit considered the key question to be whether the plaintiff had “adequately alleged that her optometrist lacked independence.” The court answered in the affirmative, relying on various provisions in the leasing arrangement that, as a whole, indicated that “Wal-Mart and FirstSight were able to exercise undue influence over all their resident optometrists.” Evidence of such “undue” influence included Wal-Mart “setting rent as a percentage of revenue, prescribing minimum operating hours, and permitting the lessor to terminate leases at will.” The court also noted that there was anecdotal evidence that optometrists at other Wal-Mart locations were constrained in the rates they could charge and the therapies they could recommend.
However, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the claims based on violations of California laws that prohibited, among other things, retailers from directly or indirectly employing or maintaining an optometrist in stores that sell eyewear. The court reasoned that the plaintiff “fail[ed] to establish how her injury was fairly traceable to the purported statutory violations.”
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Takes Broad View of What Is Required for a Licensee to Be “Independent”
Touted as a major step in its efforts toward Medicare modernization, CMS issued a proposed Physician Fee Schedule rule on July 12, 2018 that would, in part, gut the current five-tier structure for Evaluation and Management (“E/M”) codes and collapse levels 2 through 5 down to one payment rate. The proposed payment overhaul, coupled with changes in the documentation required to support certain claims for reimbursement, is geared toward simplifying the Medicare billing rules and reducing the administrative burden for physicians so that they can focus on patient care.
E/M services comprise about 40% of the charges approved by Medicare under the physician fee schedule, with office visits representing half of that amount. Currently, documentation for these visits must comply with rigorous Documentation Guidelines that require a record of all clinically relevant information, as well as justification for medical necessity and appropriateness. There are five visit levels in each new patient and established patient E/M code family, and documentation must justify the code level being billed. Each visit level is tied to a different reimbursement rate reflecting different levels of service complexity and time spent.
The proposed rule would retain the existing CPT coding structure, but provide for a single, blended reimbursement rate for both new and established patients for outpatient E/M level 2 through 5 office visits. Add-on codes will be available to reflect additional resources involved in providing complex primary care and non-procedural services. The documentation standards for more complex office visits would be reduced to the amount required for a level 2 visit. While many providers would continue to document justification for higher levels of care, in part because of non-Medicare payers, CMS asserts that the change would provide immediate relief from the need to “audit against the visit levels.” The single work RVU for the collapsed office visit category would fall somewhere between the current level 2 and level 5 amounts. The following example is provided in the proposed rule:
Preliminary Comparison of Payment Rates for Office Visits, New Patients
| HCPCS Code | CY 2018 Non-facility Payment Rate |
CY 2018 Non-facility Payment Rate under the proposed methodology |
| 99201 | $45 | $44 |
| 99202 | $76 | $135 |
| 99203 | $110 | |
| 99204 | $167 | |
| 99205 | $211 |
Continue Reading Proposed Medicare E/M Payment Overhaul Draws Mixed Reviews
Ten Republican Senators have introduced a bill that they say will require health insurers to cover pre-existing conditions if the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) is invalidated. Critics counter that the bill offers little actual protection. Like the ACA, it would prohibit insurers from denying enrollment based on pre-existing conditions, but unlike the ACA, it would not require insurers to cover the conditions themselves.
The bill is the latest volley in an ongoing battle over the fate of the ACA. Here are some key steps that set the stage:
Continue Reading ACA Debate Intensifies Ahead of Midterm Elections