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In this Issue:
1.
Welcome from State Coverage Initiatives (SCI) Director
2. Save the Date: SCI Summer Meeting, June 28-29
3. New Profile in Coverage: Pennsylvania's Health Insurance
Premium
Payment
(HIPP) Program
4. West Virginia Passes Legislation to Help Small Businesses
Cover
Their Employees
5. SCI Funds Implementation of Maine's Dirigo Reform
6. SCI to Co-Host Meeting on Medicare Prescription
Drug Benefit
7. AcademyHealth Launches Online Interest Group for
State Health Policymakers
8. HCFO Research Sheds Light on Employers' Decisions
to Self-Insure
9. Reports of Interest
1.
Welcome from SCI Director, Alice Burton
The
State Coverage Initiatives (SCI) program
is pleased to announce the first issue of its new St@teside e-newsletter,
the first of many activities and projects from SCI in the coming
months. As many of you know, I recently joined the SCI program as
its new director. After many years in Maryland state government,
I am happy to be in Washington, D.C., at AcademyHealth, learning
about and sharing the many unique experiences of states.
We hope that St@teside will serve as a way to update and inform
you of SCI's products and services in a format that is easy to navigate
and circulate among your colleagues. In addition, this electronic
newsletter will come to you at the beginning of each month, more
regularly than the previous print newsletter. Your colleagues may
also sign up to receive St@teside by e-mailing sci@academyhealth.org.
SCI
has a lot planned in the coming months, and we will use St@teside
to keep you posted. Our goal is to be responsive to your needs as
a state policymaker. Please contact us at sci@academyhealth.org
or call me at 202.292.6700 if there are issues of particular interest
to you or ways that SCI can be helpful.
I look
forward to working with you all in the future.
Alice
Burton
SCI Director
2.
Save the Date: SCI Summer Meeting
The
State Coverage Initiatives program is pleased to announce the date
and location for its summer workshop for state officials:
June
28-29, 2004
W
Lakeshore Hotel in Chicago
The
SCI team is in the process of developing an agenda for this meeting.
Likely topics we will address include:
- Models
for building on employer-sponsored coverage;
- Public
program cuts and changes;
- Primary
care benefit packages and their role in the public and private
markets;
- Purchasing
strategies;
- An
update on Health Care Tax Credits and Health Savings Accounts;
and
- Developments
regarding medical malpractice in the states.
Please
send ideas on topics you would like to see included on the agenda
to sci@academyhealth.org.
Slides
from
recent SCI meetings for state officials are available on the SCI
Web site. Our most recent meeting, which took place in January,
addressed a variety of relevant topics, including Healthy New York,
Maine's Dirigo Health Plan, implications of Medicare reform on states,
pharmacy cost-containment strategies, and community initiatives.
3.
New Profile in Coverage: Pennsylvania's Health Insurance Premium
Payment (HIPP) Program
Pennsylvania's
HIPP program has emerged as an efficient and financially successful
employer buy-in program since its implementation in 1994. Joanne
Slesser, the program's former director, was closely involved with
its design and implementation. SCI talks with Slesser about how
Pennsylvania's HIPP program works, its successes and challenges,
and the lessons she learned along the way.
View
the Profile in Coverage. For more information on Pennsylvania's
HIPP program, please also see the State Coverage
Matrix.
4.
West Virginia Passes Legislation to Help Small Businesses Cover
Their Employees
In
mid-March, West Virginia, an SCI demonstration
grantee, passed key legislation intended to help uninsured small
businesses provide coverage for their employees. The new law creates
a private/public partnership between the West
Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA) and insurance
companies that choose to offer the plan. West
Virginia's plan will allow carriers to access PEIA's reimbursement
rates and drug purchasing plan, enabling the new small business
coverage cost to be 20-25 percent below the usual market rate. This
will expand the pool of insured working West Virginians.
5.
SCI Funds Implementation of Maine's Dirigo Reform
In
order to facilitate the implementation of the much-heralded Dirigo
Health Plan, the State Coverage Initiatives program awarded the
state of Maine a one-year grant
for $275,000. Specifically, the SCI grant will fund the design and
pricing of the plan's benefit package and subsidy levels, an analysis
of current health care spending in Maine, the creation and pricing
of the "savings offset payment," the assessments of the
insurers and third party administrators that will partially fund
the expansion, and additional information dissemination efforts.
The National Academy for State Health
Policy is acting as a fiduciary agent for the grant.
Dirigo
Health Plan, signed into law in June 2003 by Governor John Baldacci
(D), will begin accepting enrollees on July 1, 2004. In Latin, Dirigo
translates to "I Lead," which is also the state's motto.
The plan is a system-wide health reform law designed to expand access
to coverage to all Mainers by 2009, to bring down the cost growth
of health care in the state, and to continually improve the quality
of care provided to its citizens.
More
information on the Dirigo Health Plan can be found on Governor
Baldacci's Web site.
6.
Everything You Wanted to Know about Medicare's Prescription Drug
Benefit, But Were Afraid to Ask
We
hear you! During SCI's January 2004 meeting, Health
Care Reforms: Re-examining State Strategies, many of you
had questions about the Medicare Modernization Act's implications
for states. The State Coverage Initiatives team is working with
the Rutgers Center for State
Health Policy (CSHP) and the Center
for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) to address states' needs for
information and technical assistance.
States'
pharmacy assistance program staff and Medicaid personnel will be
invited to participate in a teleconference this spring to identify
technical assistance needs for states in coordinating the new Medicare
drug benefit with existing state pharmacy and Medicaid programs.
Focusing on topics identified, SCI and CSHP will also host a meeting
in the fall of 2004 bringing together state officials, funders,
and national experts. The meeting will be sponsored by the federal
Agency for Healthcare Research and
Quality and The Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation (through SCI and CHCS). For more information, contact
Alice Burton at 202.292.6700 or alice.burton@academyhealth.org.
7.
AcademyHealth Launches Online Interest Group for State Health Policymakers
AcademyHealth
has created a series of Interest Groups to provide a forum for researchers
and policymakers to share information, network with their peers,
and learn more about topics related to health services research
and health policy. The State
Health Policy and Research Interest Group gives state health
leaders an opportunity to interact and discuss state-level research,
investigations related to state health policy, and relevant health
services research. Topics recently discussed in this forum include
administrative cost savings and health information technology for
rural hospitals.
The
State Health Policy and Research Interest Group is one of the 10
Interest Groups currently offered through AcademyHealth. Through
the groups' Web-based discussion forums, individuals can connect
with and learn from their colleagues across the country. Interest
Groups also meet annually at AcademyHealth meetings and conferences,
such as the upcoming Annual
Research Meeting being held June 6-8, 2004, in San Diego.
For
more information or to join this Interest Group, visit the Interest
Group Web site.
8.
HCFO Research Sheds Light on Employers' Decisions to Self-Insure
The
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Changes
in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program recently
published a findings
brief indicating that state variation in insurance laws is a
major driver of employers' self-insurance decisions. The brief highlights
HCFO-sponsored research conducted by Gail Jensen, Ph.D., at Wayne
State University.
Jensen
found that employers choosing to self-insure did so largely out
of convenience. By self-insuring, employers can avoid conflicts
in insurance laws across states and prevent the hassle of outsourcing
insurance for some plans but not others. Some researchers and policy
analysts have speculated that employers tend to self-insure their
firms in order to circumvent compliance with evolving state mandates
on coverage, which may require them to provide generous benefit
packages.
"It
is the disparity in insurance mandates across states, not the level
of mandates, that has been burdensome to employers and key to their
self-insurance decisions," says Jensen.
The
research also found that firms that have used a strategy of self-insuring
their conventional plans were much more likely to self-insure their
managed care options as well.
9.
New SCI Publications and Other Reports of Interest
The
following are the most recent additions to SCI's database of state
reports. A complete listing of available reports, visit the State
Reports Database.
State
of the States 2004: Cultivating Hope in Rough Terrain
January 2004
Employers
and Individuals Are Vulnerable to Unauthorized or Bogus Entities
Selling Coverage
The General Accounting Office
February 2004
Medicaid
and MinnesotaCare Satisfaction Survey Results
Minnesota Department of Human Services
February 2004
The
Costs of Not Having Health Insurance in the State of Maryland
Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
December 2003
Families
at Risk: The Impact of Premiums on Children and Families in Husky
A
Connecticut Health Foundation
November 2003
A
Picture of Uncompensated Care in California
The Petris Center on Healthcare Markets and Consumer Welfare, UCLA
October 2003
Private
Health Insurance: Federal and State Requirements Affecting Coverage
Offered by Small Businesses
The General Accounting Office
September 2003
To
view more reports like these, visit the State
Report Database.
Send
your state's reports to sci@academyhealth.org.
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