With less than four months before a new administration moves into the Oval Office, experts and stakeholders are taking stock of President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare reform law.
Even proponents of the Affordable Care Act, such as healthcare group purchasing and quality consulting firm Premier, admit the law's programs can be confusing and in its words “unfair to providers.”
On Monday, the company will release a paper that recommends ways to enhance the ACA. The paper suggests improvements that focus on offering patient-centered care, creating an adequate workforce of providers and offering incentives to participate in a variety of alternative payment models.
The policy options involve the medical education system, provider regulation and access to meaningful data for providers and patients. It also discusses creating truly interoperable electronic health records.
In an online discussion Monday, policy experts will identify ways to protect the ACA under a new administration and continue to find ways to reduce costs while maintaining and improving upon quality in healthcare delivery.
As evidence that the law is working, proponents point to recent findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which cites the ACA for bringing down the uninsured rate in the U.S. to a record low of 8.6% for the first three months of 2016.
The ACA has had setbacks as it weathered repeated GOP-led attempts to repeal the law. A 2012 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court effectively allowed states to opt out of expanding Medicaid. More recently, a number of the country's largest insurance companies, including Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans have announced plans to exit the exchanges, citing substantial financial losses.
