Texas Senate Bill 8 seeks to allow improve health care quality, accountability, and cost containment among health plans in seeting up Accountable Care Orgranizations and other collaborations.
The Federal Trade Commission is warning that one of the key health care reform bills trumpeted by Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, could substantially harm consumers.
In response to a request from Rep.
Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, the FTC released a letter saying the antitrust exemption for health care collaboratives in Senate Bill 8 “poses a substantial risk of consumer harm, by increasing costs and decreasing access to health care,” reports the Texas Tribune.
The federal Afforable Care Act includes provisions and incentives to foster the creation of Accountable Care Organizations to improve health care collaboration and bring costs down. This bill, Texas Senate Bill 8, works in much the same way giving the Texas Health and Human Services Commission permission to test various performance-based payment programs in order to increase efficiency and find ways to link payment to improved patient outcome.
The health care collaboratives would be required to pay the Texas Department of Insurance a fee to register, which the legislation states would cover the costs of hiring employees to ensure the collaboratives don't violate antitrust laws. The insurance department would be able to revoke a collaborative's license if it deemed the collaborative was reducing competition or raising costs for consumers.
So Senate Bill 8 does address the Anti-trust issue and acknowledges that a watchful eye will be kept.
Specifically though, the FTC says the antitrust exemptions in the bill are “unnecessary,” because antitrust laws already permit health care organizations to form collaboratives. The FTC is concerned that the provision to increase allowances for coordinated activity in the bill “goes beyond” what is currently legal and “appears intended to shield a broad range of anticompetitive conduct from antitrust challenge.”
Nelson called the letter federal meddling. The Naishtat weigehed in as well, “I had no idea that the Federal Trade Commission would turn this into a major event.” Naishtat indicated that he sent a one-paragraph letter to the FTC after the Consumers Union brought its concern to him about the antitrust law exemptions in the bill. “I was amazed that their response was so critical and detailed…[it] went far beyond what I thought I would receive.”
Compromise is Possible Here
It seems there is room for compromise since both Texas SB 8 and the Affordable Care Act seek the same result through similar means: increased health care collaboration to promote efficiency and improve quality. It seems these two should be able to get along.