The official in charge of the Covid-19
pneumonia response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
says HHS could arrange new ways to pay telehealth providers for help with
reducing outbreak-related strain on the U.S. health care system.
Dr. Robert Kadlec, the HHS assistant secretary
for preparedness and response, talked about provider reimbursement, briefly,
Tuesday, during a hearing the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
(HELP) Committee organized to look at how the federal government is responding
to the outbreak.
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Kadlec suggested that HHS could base the
Covid-19 telehealth provider reimbursement arrangements on the
reimbursement arrangements the federal government has used in the past for
people in disaster zones, such as people in areas affected by catastrophic hurricanes.
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., asked the hearing
witnesses about the possibility that the government could work with services
that provide care over the telephone to cope with a Covid-19-related surge
in the number of patients.
“This would have to do with insurance,” Rosen
said. “I wouldn’t want insurance to be a barrier for someone being able to at
least access a telehealth hub.”
Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director
at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an arm of HHS, said the
CDC “wants to identify the right level of care for the right situation, whether
it’s telehealth, urgent care, nurse hotline or emergency room, or office.”
If brick-and-mortar health care facilities are
overloaded, “keeping people out of the health care system physically could be
in everybody’s interest,” Schuchat said.
Kadlec said that, under the Robert T.
Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988, the law that
governs what happens in federally declared disaster areas, federal officials
can declare that individuals are National Disaster Medical System patients.
“The provider gets reimbursed 110% of Medicare
rates,” Kadlec said. “We’re in conversations with [the Centers for Medicare and
Services] to understand if that could be utilized in this way.”
Also during the hearing:
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the highest-ranking Democrat on the
Senate HELP Committee said during her opening statements that health insurance
products that fall outside the scope of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) major
medical insurance benefits standards “are not required to covered diagnostic
tests or vaccines.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said that the U.S. Supreme Court
announced this week that it would take up California et al. v. Texas et
al. Officials from Texas and other states filed the case to
challenge the constitutionality of the ACA. “It is not a good time to scare
people about whether or not they’re going to have health insurance,” Kaine
said. “I’m not sure there is a good time, but you could not do it at a worse
time, when you’re doing it as people are concerned about a pandemic.”
Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor's insurance editor, previously was
LifeHealthPro's health insurance editor. She has a bachelor's degree in
economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in
journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She
can be reached at abell@alm.com or on Twitter at @Think_Allison.
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