CIAO DATE: 11/2013
September 2013
Much has changed since 2007 when the Aspen Health Stewardship Project was launched to call attention to the uneven quality, staggering inefficiency, and unsustainable expense of the U.S. health care system. These same challenges were top-of-mind when policymakers introduced the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010. The law incorporated several recommendations of the Stewardship Project’s first report, which stressed the importance of increasing access to care for all Americans and fostering innovation that improves quality and efficiency by turning information about disease and treatments into actionable insight that providers and patients can use to improve health. Through an expansion of Medicaid and subsidies to make insurance more affordable for individuals and families, the law is projected to reduce the ranks of America’s uninsured by 60 percent. It also includes provisions that help individuals with pre-existing conditions gain access to coverage. While the Affordable Care Act expands coverage and introduces a number of measures that may contribute to improved quality and increased efficiency, it will not cure all of the system’s ills. Many challenges remain: • New coverage for the uninsured does not guarantee access, as demonstrated in Massachusetts when the state implemented its program for universal coverage. Shortages of primary care providers in many areas of the country remain a critical barrier to preventive care, shortages that will worsen unless medical students are rewarded for entering primary care fields. • Inefficiency remains endemic, depriving the system of financial and clinical resources that could fuel quality improvement efforts and preserve the health of Americans. • Patients still lack access to data and analysis that would enable them to identify providers, health systems, and interventions that produce better or equal outcomes at lower cost.
Resource link: Reinventing Health Care: The barriers to Innovation [PDF] - 838K