State Options To Control Health Care Costs And Improve Quality

The recent debate on health care reform has occurred mostly at the national level. The Affordable Care Act, or ACA, was a momentous change for the American health care system. So far, 20 million people have gained health insurance coverage due to the ACA — a historic reduction in the number of uninsured people in the United States. The ACA also contained several tools designed to control health care costs. For example, it created the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, or CMMI, which is authorized to test new payment and delivery methods to lower costs and improve quality for individuals who receive benefits from federal health insurance programs. Partly due to the ACA, health care cost spending growth has slowed in recent years. Before 2014, there were five years of historically low growth, and 2011 was the first time in a decade that spending on health care grew more slowly than the U.S. economy. Health care costs are still projected to grow faster than the overall economy, however, and health care spending already puts tremendous pressure on state and federal budgets and limits spending on other important services. More needs to be done to sustain this slowdown in growth. The current political environment makes it unlikely that reforms to control system-wide health care costs will be achieved at the federal level in the near future. States, however, are well-positioned to take the lead on implementing cost control and quality improvement reforms. Indeed, man...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Costs and Spending Featured Long-term Services and Supports Medicaid and CHIP Medicare Organization and Delivery Payment Policy Quality ACA APCDs CMMI Gobeille vs. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company Payment Reform state policy St Source Type: blogs