Health Justice CT video contest winners announced

HealthJusticeCT has announced the winners of this year’s video challenge. The contest challenged individuals and groups to develop short, creative videos encouraging people in CT to take advantage of the ACA and enroll in health care. The three winners deserve congratulations, but all the videos were exceptional, creative and inspiring gathering over 3,000 You Tube views. HealthJusticeCT is a growing collaborative across stakeholders working to promote health equity in CT through social media.

SIM comments on financial incentives, consumer surveys

SIM has started floating their proposals to implement health care reform in CT and #2 in particular is troubling for consumers. One proposal offered as a financing option by SIM staff would replace advanced payments for new, effective services such as care coordination and medication management with shared savings payments. This could create unfortunate incentives to parse patient panels and deliver those services only to patients who can produce savings. The incentives to recoup investments not guaranteed by advanced payments, are similar to downside risk. SIM has repeatedly affirmed the likely value of these new services and stated their intention to encourage them. Netting their cost out of or completely replacing them with shared savings payments would undermine that commitment. Interestingly, other new treatments -- drugs and therapies -- that are expected to add value and keep people healthy, are not disincentivized. These new services are no less valuable because they are not traditional care.

Policy papers #1 and #2 are doubtless only the beginning of a flood of policy proposals. Stay tuned for more comments from consumer advocates.

Note: Independent consumer advocates also submitted comments to SIM opposing any state of mind test to enforcement of under service standards.

Harvard Pilgrim earns license to sell insurance in CT

Yesterday Harvard Pilgrim announced that they received approval from CT’s insurance department to sell health insurance in our state, but specific plans and prices are still under review. Harvard Pilgrim, a nonprofit insurer, covers over a million lives in MA, NH and ME with plans to expand to the rest of New England. The company plans to begin selling insurance this quarter with coverage to start July 1^st. They won’t be ready to sell on the insurance exchange this year, but expect to participate for 2016 coverage.

April CT Health Policy Webquiz: Medicaid, exchange churn in CT

Test your knowledge about churn out of public coverage in CT. Take the April CT Health Policy Webquiz.

CTNJ Op-Ed: How is CT’s exchange really doing?

CT News Junkie is a CT treasure that policymakers, advocates and other stakeholders rely on for the latest information on the topics we need to track. CTNJ gives you the unvarnished news about what’s happening, and why. CTNJ Op-Eds offer an important platform for thoughtful commenters to give context to the news and offer their perspective. My latest piece looks at how the exchange is doing – what is working, what isn’t, and what’s next.

My first FDA Advisory Committee meeting – refreshing change from CT

I was recently appointed as a consumer representative to the FDA’s Anti-Infective Drug Advisory Committee and yesterday was my first meeting. It was a bit intimidating to open the Wall Street Journal that morning to see an article about our meeting. It was fascinating – I learned more new things yesterday than I did all last year. The committee advises the FDA about new antibiotics with a deep dive into science and clinical trials on effectiveness and safety. Drug resistant bacterial infections affect 2 million Americans each year, killing 23,000, according to the CDC. There are 45 new antibiotics in the pipeline and yesterday we considered two of them. We heard from a small army of very impressive, dedicated, extremely well prepared experts, from both the FDA and the applicant drug companies, who answered every question the committee posed. The room was packed. We heard very moving public comment from families and patients affected by MRSA and from researchers concerned about protecting the public.

But the most striking thing, for a CT advocate, was the FDA’s discipline around ethics. Applicants to FDA committees complete a thick stack of documentation to ensure no conflicts of interest. The only voting members of the committee are independent clinical/academic experts, agency experts and consumer representatives. This may sound strange to anyone in CT policymaking, but they are very strict that drug companies do not vote on or influence the regulations they operate under. Weighing the best interests of consumers was the only priority – for everyone at the meeting. In CT we routinely have industries at the table, and people with financial interests in those industries, usually dominating the membership. In CT, industries are making decisions about what standards they have to reach, what they can charge, and how they will be monitored (if at all). Consumers and advocates have to fight our way into the process -- preferably at the table, but if necessary by other means – and we are punished for it. The entire day I never heard about how our or FDA’s decisions would affect jobs or stock prices. It just never came up – protecting people and saving lives is the only priority.

State Health assessment unveiled

DPH has been working for over a year to develop CT’s State Health Assessment and Health Improvement Plan --  a comprehensive plan to identify health challenges in CT, set priorities and create an action plan to address them. The process has been collaborative, inclusive, transparent and through. The plan focused on promoting health equity, ensuring action steps are feasible, effective and designed to engage and inspire communities. The plan is evidence-based with a focus on systems change. The plan set seven final priority issues with dozens of measurable benchmarks under each. Now comes the hard part – implementing the plan.