Tuesday Tidbits

Yesterday, the U.S. Government Accounting Office released a report on postal retiree health benefits. The office's conclusion is as follows:

About 500,000 postal retirees receive retiree health benefits. The Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund pays most of the costs. 

The Postal Service has not made $38.2 billion in required payments to this fund through fiscal year 2017. If it makes no more payments, the Office of Personnel Management projects the fund will be depleted in fiscal year 2030. 

We highlighted several approaches to address this shortfall, such as requiring most eligible retirees to participate in Medicare, increasing cost-sharing, or reducing benefits. 

Congress should consider legislation to put postal retiree health benefits on a more sustainable footing.

Congress had been considering such legislation until the President decided to create his own Postal System Reform Task Force last April. The Task Force report was timely delivered to Congress in early August. Hopefully the President will get the reform ball rolling again in time for the lame duck session of Congress in November.

Mergers and acquisitions tidbits:

• United Healthcare, according to Bloomberg, acquired Genoa Healthcare, a large chain of pharmacies that operate out of mental health and substance use disorder facilities.  
• Healthcare Dive reports that the two largest health systems in Texas -- Dallas based Baylor Scott and White on the one hand and Houston based Memorial Hermann Health System on the other -- have a sign a letter of intent to merger their companies. "  Combined, the two would operate 68 hospitals, two health plans and more than 14,000 affiliated physicians" in the Lone Star State. 

Miscellaneous tidbits:

• Beckers Hospital Review provides interesting perspectives on savings that telehealth can generate. 
• The Health Affairs blog discusses recent and ongoing court decisions concerning the ACA's individual non-discrimination provision known as Section 1557. With far sighted thinking from the carriers, the FEHBP has been able to avoid this ACA litigation trap.
• The International Foundation reports that the IRS has finalized the 2018 IRS forms used to report compliance with the ACA's individual and employer shared responsibility provisions -- Forms 1094-B, 1094-C, 1095-B, 1095-C and related instructions. The International Foundation site also links to those forms and instructions