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ACP offers recommendations to Congress for health care reform

Today, the ACP released a new policy agenda containing several recommendations for Congress to improve American health care.

The paper, titled A Prescription for a Forward-Looking Agenda to Improve American Health Care, emphasizes ACP’s view that it is time to cease the “unfruitful” debate over repealing and replacing the ACA. Instead ACP urges Congress and the administration to create and implement a “forward-thinking agenda” for health care reform in collaboration with ACP and other clinician and patient advocacy organizations.

During a briefing in Washington, Jack Ende, MD, MACP, president of ACP, highlighted the agenda’s seven essential elements of an effective health care system, including:

• expanding access and coverage;
• optimizing value for the dollar spent;
• reducing the overbearing administrative burden on physicians and patients;
• leveraging technology to enhance care, such as telemedicine;
• supporting a well-trained physician workforce;
• reducing barriers to care for patients with a chronic disease; and
• supporting and advancing scientific research and public health.

“We strongly believe that the American Health Care Act as passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 4 will not be neutral, it will bring harm and rollback coverage for millions, especially the most vulnerable — the old, the sick and the poor,” Ende said during the briefing.

“Instead we should have a working bipartisan solution to close gaps in coverage while stabilizing insurance markets. ... It is a matter of patients’ rights while preserving and better yet expanding coverage and access to go beyond that, to make certain that health care is accessible and affordable and of the highest quality and value,” he added.

“Patients need an effective health care system that puts their health first,” Ende concluded. “Our paper offers specific policies to make this happen.”

The agenda is coming out at a very critical time for health care in the United States, Bob Doherty, senior vice president of ACP’s Division of Governmental Affairs and Public Policy, noted during the briefing.

The ACP recommendations coincided with the release of President Donald J. Trump’s proposed budget for the 2018 fiscal year. That budget includes $610 billion in cuts to Medicaid, $5.8 billion in cuts to the NIH and other very deep cuts to Medicaid, primary care training, medical research and many other critical programs that benefit patients, the medical profession and patient care, Doherty said.

“The continued polarization and partisanship over the future of the Affordable Care Act is standing in the way of making progress to issue that are essential to improving our health care system,” Doherty said.

A group of 430 ACP members, physicians and medical students, from 47 states, the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia will go to Capitol Hill tomorrow, May 24, to bring ACP’s advocacy agenda to senators and representatives in congressional visits, Doherty said.

“It’s critical that we bring this message directly to our members of Congress,” Ende said in a press release. “They need to hear directly from us about why our proposals are the best way to advance the health care reform. The voice of the medical profession is key to making sure that the policies enacted into law will truly improve health care.” – by Alaina Tedesco

Disclosure: Healio Internal Medicine was unable to confirm relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.