RISE summarizes recent regulatory-related headlines and reports.
Washington Post: VA to cut thousands of unfilled health care jobs
Doctors, nurses, and support staff are among the 35,000 positions being cut from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), according to The Washington Post based on an internal memo and interviews with VA staff and congressional aides. The VA has already lost approximately 30,000 staff this year due to attrition and buyout officers.
The memo indicates the VA wants to cut the health care workforce to 372,000. A spokesperson for the agency confirmed the elimination of 26,400 open positions that have been unfilled for a year. The publication also reported that the agency intends to soon announce plans for a massive reorganization of its regional offices.
The cuts will further strain the VA system, Thomas Dargon Jr., deputy general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents thousands of VA employees, told the Post. “The VA has been chronically understaffed for years, and employees are obviously going to be facing the brunt of any further job cuts or reorganization that results in employees having to do more work with less,” he said.
Study: Traditional Medicare could have saved $7B over four-year period
A new report conducted by the Berkeley Research Group and commissioned by Elevance Health finds that traditional Medicare could have saved $7 billion from 2019-2023 on four services if its utilization rates mirrored those of Medicare Advantage. The Office of Inspector General has flagged these services—skin substitutes, catheters, genetic tests, and off-the-shelf orthotic braces—as prone to fraud, waste, and abuse.
Researchers used traditional Medicare fee-for-service claims and Medicare Advantage encounter data records to calculate utilization rates for the four services and then estimate potential savings if traditional Medicare utilization mirrored MA utilization rates for those services. For example, they found that over the four-year period, traditional Medicare spending on skin substitutes was 1.5 to 6.5 times greater than Medicare Advantage, or more than $5.6 billion.
Elevance Health said that Medicare could employ similar fraud detection strategies and medical management techniques as Medicare Advantage plans to identify potential areas for fraud, waste and abuse and protect the Medicare program from unnecessary spending.
Gallup poll: Nearly a third of Americans consider health care cost the most urgent health problem
A new West Health Gallup Health and Healthcare Survey finds that Americans consider the cost of health care is the “most urgent health problem” facing the country, a record high. It outpaces access to health care (17 percent) and obesity (8 percent) as the country’s top health problem.
The poll is based on the responses of 1,321 adults questioned in telephone interviews conducted during the month of November.
Other key findings:
- Satisfaction with the cost of U.S. health care is the lowest Gallup has recorded since 2001. Only `6 percent say they are satisfied, compared with 19 percent last year and 30 percent in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Twenty-three percent say the U.S. health care is in a state of crisis and 47 percent believe the system has major problems.
- Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) believe the federal government should ensure all Americans have health care coverage, the highest percentage since 2007 calling for government intervention. However, Americans are split on how the system should run. Forty-eight percent of adults prefer a private system. Forty-six percent support a government-run system.