The Health Law Ticker

With the tremendous growth of managed care over the last several years, the Medicare and Medicaid programs have had to transform how they fund health care for approximately 100 million enrollees. According to the Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG), 2022 saw half of Medicare enrollees receive coverage through Medicare Advantage plans. As a result, government spending on Medicare Advantage was $403B, or about 50% of all Medicare funds. Similarly, 81% of current Medicaid enrollees receive some component of their coverage through managed ...

A recent California First District Court of Appeal (“Court”) decision, Futterman v. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., (“Futterman”) has shed light on potential liabilities for noncompliance with the State’s mental health parity requirements.¹

As background, the COVID-19 pandemic served as a catalyst for increasing already soaring behavioral health care demand, by intensifying mental health and substance use conditions across the country. In a 2020 survey by the California Health Care Foundation, Californians ranked mental health treatment as their top ...

Well, not exactly. However, in an expansion of regulatory oversight, the Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) finalized a new rule last year broadening the scope of “person[s]” required to obtain a license under the Knox-Keene Act. The new rule, 28 CCR Section 1300.49, is likely the most significant policy development in California managed care oversight since the enactment of laws governing risk bearing organizations in the late 1990s. Absent legislative or further regulatory action, any entity accepting any amount of global risk in exchange for a prepaid or periodic ...