TGIF

Avalere Health posted a report on the anticipated negative impact of the Trump Administration's association health plan rule on the ACA individual marketplace. Bear in mind that the association health plan rule would allow small employers to return to same employer sponsored marketplace that they used before full Obamacare kicked in. More flexibility, more choice, lower cost. The FEHBlog has an idea -- let the large marketplace rules apply across the board.

Yesterday, as NPR reports, the White House held a summit on the opioid crisis. "After introducing a personal friend who lost a son to drugs, the president addressed his administration's plans for battling the opioid epidemic. 'The administration is going to be rolling out policy over the next three weeks, and it will be very, very strong,' Trump said. I've also spoken with [Attorney General] Jeff [Sessions] about bringing a lawsuit against some of these opioid companies.'"

Uber, the ride sharing company, introduced Uber Health which allows healthcare providers to arrange rides for their patients in order to reduce no-shows, among other things. Healthcare Dive considers four questions raised by the initiative. The FEHBlog wonders whether health benefit plans will use Uber Health to help get members to healthcare visits in order to boost their HEDIS health care quality measure scores.

Becker's Hospital Review sent a chill up the FEHBlog's spine by reporting that the World Health Organization will be releasing the ICD-11 diagnosis coding set in June 2018. "The latest draft version contains about 30 main categories. New categories include conditions related to sexual health, traditional medicine conditions and diseases of the immune system. The traditional medicine chapter involves 'disorders and patterns which originated in ancient Chinese medicine and are commonly used in China, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere around the world.'" Will our government have the gumption to say no to replacing the already complicated ICD-10 with the ICD-11 for HIPAA coding set purposes?