In The News/Media Activities
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ Oct. 14 announcement
that she could “not see a viable path forward” for implementing the CLASS Act inspired an Oct. 24
Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM member login required) article on the future of long-term care.
Steve Schoonveld, the co-chairperson of the Joint Academy and Society of Actuaries CLASS Act Task Force, was quoted
in the article. Schoonveld said it could be beneficial for employers to enable employees to purchase long-term care
coverage for their spouses or parents so that employees would not be forced to take time off to provide care.
Secretary Sebelius’ announcement also prompted a joint hearing by two subcommittees of the
U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Academy’s 2009 letter to Congress
that included an actuarial analysis of the CLASS Act by a joint Academy/Society of Actuaries work group was in the
spotlight during the Oct. 26 hearing, which was broadcast by C-SPAN. The Academy
letter and study were cited and discussed by U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health Chairman Joe Pitts (R-Pa.),
and Reps. Charles Boustany (R-La.) and Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.).
Reps. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) and Tom Cole (R-Okla.) co-authored an Oct. 31 op-ed published by
Roll Call. The op-ed, which focused on the tax treatment of health benefits under the ACA,
cited a joint Academy and Society of Actuaries January 2010 technical report regarding the excise
tax contained in then-proposed health care reform legislation. The actuaries said the proposal, which would use premiums to measure the
comprehensiveness of benefits, disproportionately could affect early retirees as well as small business and high-risk professionals—not
because their plans are more generous, but because the cost of premiums for these groups tends to be high.
The Academy Risk Sharing Work Group’s Oct. 28 comment letter
to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on the proposed rule for implementing risk-sharing mechanisms
included in the ACA was cited in a Nov. 3 Bureau of National Affairs article (subscription required). The work
group wrote that despite the law’s guaranteed issue requirements, “risk selection still could occur if issuers
are able to use non-health status information (such as consumer data) to estimate individual health spending and to target
marketing materials to those with low expected health spending relative to others.” Consumer data from credit card
transactions that indicate spending patterns and lifestyle choices increasingly are available to market researchers, the work
group wrote. “Because risk adjustment will not be able to fully reflect the underlying risk of enrollees, CMS may wish
to consider appropriate marketing restrictions or network adequacy requirements,” the actuaries wrote.
The Academy Medicare Steering Committee’s letter to
the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction was cited and briefly discussed in a Kaiser Health News
feature. The letter, signed by steering committee Chairperson Edwin Hustead, urged the committee to address Medicare’s solvency and
sustainability by developing proposals to slow health care spending growth.
News links are to external websites. The Academy is not responsible for the content of these websites.
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The U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will hear a challenge to President Obama’s heath care reform law.
The court said it will consider several arguments relating to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including:
