Description: Republicans have promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act for years. Now that they have power, what will Republican health care reform look like?

Description: Identifying and submitting all appropriate ICD-9 diagnosis codes to CMS will result in a higher risk score for the member and increased payments to Medicare Advantage plans. Milliman's HCC prevalence study illustrates the significant variations in HCC prevalence rates by age/gender, geography, and population type and will assist plans in benchmarking the effectiveness of their own diagnosis code capture efforts.

Description: Updates on the efforts of the Academy’s health practice council. its work groups and task forces, to educate health care policymakers on issues including principles for reform, Medicare, the individual insurance market, and risk factors.

Description: Summary and analysis of the diseases and conditions exhibited in the Medicare Advantage population

Description: A proposal to reform current health care market, from a 'preferred payer' system, in which Medicare and Medicaid pay less than the true cost while others must then pay more, to a 'value for money' system. This would be achieved by requiring providers to bill all patients the same rate for the same services, with a standard bundling format to make all providers' rate differences transparent. Differences between billed charges and what Medicare pays would be made up by the Medicare patient, rather than subsidized by those outside of Medicare.

Description: Risk adjustment is used to adjust the revenue stream to health insurers that sell ACA eligible plans and Medicare Advantage plans. This article compares and contrasts these risk adjustment programs.

Description: This article focuses on the capitation rate development methodology for the Medicare-Medicaid Financial Alignment Demonstration. It also describes the background behind the establishment of the initiative and how it will be evaluated.

Description: This article compares the Prescription Drug Plan (PDP) market to the commercial individual market exchanges included in the Affordable Care Act. PDP carrier actions to date could help predict certain aspects of the exchange market.

Description: The editors of Health Watch have made health care reform the focus of the Sepctember 2009 issue, and provide an introduction to the issue's contents.

Description: Strategies to position Medicare Advantage plans for success during August resubmission.