Good News for Health Care Reform Implementation

HCR implementation is steaming ahead. Jonathan Cohn lays out some of the key issues in a recent article in The American Prospect. A restrictive definition of “grandfathered plans” (which are not subject to the Affordable Care Act (ACA)) was an early victory for consumer advocates. Coverage appeal rules will soon be hotly contested during the rulemaking process:

Even if insurers are required to take all comers at relatively nondiscriminatory prices — “relatively” since age can be a rough proxy for medical condition — they’ll still have financial incentives to restrict care. This isn’t entirely a bad thing: Given the evidence of rampant overtreatment in American medicine, insurers should exercise some check on the use of technology, drugs, and other resources, for the sake of the patients as well as the insurers’ bottom line. But because insurers sometimes deny even necessary care, just to increase profit margins, the law seeks to limit the insurers’ authority — most obviously, by opening up treatment denials to outside appeal.

The idea sounds simple enough: Allow patients convinced they’ve been wrongly denied care to make their case to independent experts with authority to overrule the insurer. But who are the experts? How quickly must they rule? And what’s to stop insurers from ignoring the recommendations? The Obama administration has to write regulations answering all of those questions. A viable, working model exists: The National Association of State Insurance Commissioners has a framework, similar to what’s already in place in several states. HHS will consult those guidelines in devising a new scheme. The model is not perfect, but with sufficiently strong regulations it could give consumers significant new leverage.

Cohn also notes some important appointments at HHS. Having examined her work in the past, I was encouraged by the appointment of Karen Pollitz to “set up an Internet portal to provide basic information about different insurance policies.”

Nevertheless, Tim Jost warns that there are many possible obstacles ahead:

The primary obstacles to the successful implementation of the Affordable Care Act will be political, not legal. If the Republicans take back the House or Senate this fall or in 2012, they may be able to impede if not totally block implementation. If the states refuse to cooperate, the program could become a largely federal program, dependent on federal resources and resolve. If President Obama is not elected to a second term, the program may find itself with an executive that is hostile or indifferent to it. Most important, if the public remains confused or ambivalent about the legislation, even the most committed government officials may be unable to carry it out. The struggle to turn opponents of health-care reform into partners has only just begun.

The ACA is massive, and it’s easy to imagine selective or perverse implementation of the law creating bigger problems than the status quo it has so far improved upon. Paul Starr offers these words of advice given to Jon Kingsdale, who directed much of Massachusetts’s reform implementation post-2006: “it’s a political campaign from the day you start.”