Health Care Repair

Thank you for you support and participation in HealthCare REPAIR over the last two years; your action helped to bring the importance of value-based health care to the attention of the Congress and the President during this intense and historic debate.  We believe that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is an important initial step toward ensuring quality, affordable health care for all Americans, but we believe that much more needs to be done.

Even though the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center did not take a position of support or opposition to the final legislation, we believe that the new health care reform law contains provisions that are aligned with our principles for reform, principles that will begin to move us toward a system that provides all Americans with quality care at affordable costs. Some of these provisions include:

• Provisions to pay more for value – better health care outcomes at lower cost,
• Insurance reforms, including elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions,
• An insurance exchange, rather than an expansion of Medicare or a government-run public option,
• Subsidies for people with financial need to purchase health insurance,
• An independent payment advisory board, and
• Pilot projects on accountable-care organizations, medical homes and bundled payments.

The Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center continues to articulate our areas of agreement and areas of concern. We believe the pay-for-value provisions are a good start, but not comprehensive or aggressive enough to have an immediate impact on lowering the cost and improving the quality of health care.  We are also concerned about the continued approach of funding reform through the use of across-the-board payment cuts.

With the passage of the bill, the specific work of HealthCare REPAIR is coming to a close, but our desire to keep the public engaged in the ongoing process continues.  In the next few months we will be launching a new initiative called Americans for Better Health Care. Americans for Better Health Care (ABHC) will help the public understand how a value-based health care system can improve the lives of patients and their families by improving outcomes and lowering health care costs. As with HealthCare REPAIR, we will organize people to advocate publicly for the expansion of patient-centered care based on the idea of value in health care.

We’re currently developing the specifics of ABHC, and we’ll keep you posted as we progress. We might ask for your input as we develop the new program, so please keep an eye out for emails from us.

Once again, thank you very much for all your help and participation in HealthCare REPAIR. We look forward to working with you again as Americans for Better Health Care.