Week in Washington

On The Campaign Trail

• New Candidate – Earlier this week President Biden announced that he would not be seeking re-election and endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris for nomination. Within the week, Vice President Harris had obtained sufficient pledged delegates to become the presumptive nominee for the Democratic party (the party does not officially nominate its candidate until August). While the Harris campaign has not released any new policies the expectation is that reproductive rights and tackling the cost of care will be key cornerstones in her campaign.
• Medicaid – The Paragon Institute, a conservative leaning think tank with strong connections to the Trump Campaign, released a paper making policy proposals on reducing Medicaid funding. The two main proposals would be to phase out the current 90 percent matching for the ACA Medicaid Expansion population so that regular FMAP would apply after eight years and reduce the regular matching rate to states from 50 percent to 40 percent after eight years. This would reduce spending on Medicaid between 2026 and 2034 by approximately $600 billion according to the authors.  There is a growing expectation that a second Trump Administration would attempt to cut Medicaid spending.

CMS

• Risk Adjustment – CMS released benefit year 2023 risk adjustment transfer results for the individual and small group markets. Overall risk adjustment transfers, as a percent of premium, was down. Last year the absolute value of transfers was about 10.3 percent compared to the prior years’ 10.4 percent of total premiums.
• Agent-Broker –  CMS announced that it was making operational changes to reduce unauthorized changes to consumers enrollments. CMS announcement that it has received about 75 thousand complaints of unauthorized plan switching and about 135 thousand complaints on unauthorized enrollment so far this year.
• 2026 Payment Notice – CMS’ ACA related proposed Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters arrived early to OMB. The expectation is that the proposed rule will publish early, giving time for current Administration to finalize the rule before the end of the term.

Flu Vaccine

Axios reported that demand for flu vaccine shots has declined over the past two years, including among the elderly.  2023 to 2024 flu season saw about 63.2 million US adults get a vaccine shot compared to 69.5 million the prior flu season. Flu related hospitalizations and death increased last year, raising concerns that the drop off in vaccine uptake could lead to worse health outcomes.

GDP Growth Still Good

New data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that the US economy grew 2.8% in the second quarter of 2024. Consumer spending and business investment continued at a strong pace. Overall, a very good sign of continued economic growth.