David Harlow

The federal Health Insurance Exchange regulations were released in final form last week. Now that the regs are final, Pennsylvania and the rest of the states had better get cracking, because they are all supposed to have functioning exchanges by January 1, 2014.

There are at least two conversations going on in the health care marketplace today, each focused on one of two key questions. One is: How can we achieve the Triple Aim? The other is: Why do they get to do that? (It's not fair! I want more!)

The final Accountable Care Organization regulations are out, the initial flurry of commentary is out, and we can now all catch our collective breath and contemplate the draft vs. final ACO regulation comparisons, the meaning of this new, final set of regulations, guidances and statements.

The Health Care Compliance Association's New England Regional Conference was held recently, and I'd like to highlight the final session of the day, which featured Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Trusiak, from the Western District of New York, and Carmen Ortiz, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

Many health care provider organizations have not been overly eager to jump onto the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) bandwagon, citing high startup costs and uncertain returns on investment given the complexity of the program.

Partners Health Care (the dominant provider network in Greater Boston) and Neighborhood Health Plan (a local mostly-Medicaid HMO) just announced that the former intends to acquire the latter, and maintain it as a separate operating entity.