Drilling Down on the AHCA Debate

The House passed a bill to repeal much of the ACA yesterday. But you know what? They’ve done that close to 50 times before. Senate leadership has already indicated that the bill just passed is not the version that, if any, will make it out of the upper chamber. Seems like the right time to talk about the issues that exist in the House bill, and an even better time to think bigger picture – what are we missing? So much of the conversation is centered around whether people have access to insurance and how much premiums will cost. But what about the rapidly rising costs of healthcare overall?

We’re seeing it play out: rising expenses, declining admissions, and flattening reimbursements are making healthcare an unfortunate reality for many. The squeeze is being felt across the country… from our largest academic medical centers all the way down to patients and their families. Healthcare’s costs have risen at an unsustainable rate – spending accounted for $3.3 trillion in 2015, and is 18 percent of the US economy today.

In the short term as this bill falls to the Senate, we will continue to see a polarized debate – hand wringing, emotion, and chaos. And it’s not surprising – the issues at hand are personal and economically critical to get right. I’m hopeful that this debate will get us talking about the elephant in the room we really need to address – the true COST of healthcare and the underlying root causes of dysfunction. What we pay for healthcare’s “products” - procedures, surgeries, visits, etc. seems to only go up amidst a backdrop that is complicated, overburdened, and under connected. 

At the end of the day, I think we all want the same thing: access and choice around healthcare.

And now, more than ever we are hearing incredibly moving stories from our neighbors, celebrities, and others that pull on the heart strings around what happens when access is compromised; but, we can’t fully tackle the access issue if we continue to ignore healthcare’s underlying failing infrastructure and out of control costs. If as a country we can enable market forces to take root in healthcare and replace the siloed technology backdrop, we can drive accelerated and meaningful change across care cost, quality and access. 

Healthcare is something we all own and must demand more from. This shouldn’t be a partisan issue, it should be our country’s most bi-partisan initiative and point of pride. Now is a time to come together and push on government officials to rise above the discourse and fix some of the underlying dysfunction – and there’s a lot of it.