A Federal Power Grab
This is from Walton Francis, an economist who served as a consultant to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:
This may be the most significant regulatory power grab in the history of the republic: The Office of Federal Contract Compliant (OFCC) at Labor has issued a ruling saying that any hospital or large physician practice that contracts with any of the 200 HMOs participating in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) is a Federal subcontractor subject to OFCC’s particular brand of torture. That covers the universe.
The same logic, if applied to Medicare parts C and D would certainly nail the few remaining hospitals, large physician practices, and other providers, and add the drugstores as well. Come to think of it, the OFCC forgot to include FEHBP-participating drugstores (at least half of the 50,000 in the country) in its ruling. And of course there are hospices, skilled nursing facilities, laboratories, and just about all of the 1 million medical care providers and 20 million medical care employees in the nation that participate in one FEHBP plan or another.
If the OFCC has jurisdiction, that probably means that all other federal contractor rules apply (small business set-asides and a hundred others). We are talking red tape costs alone in the billions of dollars.
This ruling is bound to raise costs for large physician practices who participate with the FEHBP. Large practices will either drop out or negotiate higher fees to offset higher costs during the next round of reimbursement negotiations. The only result that seems likely is higher costs or lower access to physician care.
The problem with creating an oversight organization is that there is no real logical boundary at which to end its jurisdiction.
No doulbt these are the same hospitals that helped Obama Care get passed. The chickens are coming home to roost.