The One Way the Trump Administration Can Drive Competition Without Regulation

By ADRIAN GROPPER, MD There is one way the Trump HHS and VA can thread the needle between provider economic self-interest and burdensome regulation and it’s based on Federal health IT policy. This past week has seen a number of high-profile announcements from the Trump HHS including Secretary Azar and CMS Administrator Verma  about patient empowerment and enhanced transparency as a strategy to breathe life into healthcare reform. Meanwhile, VA Secretary Shulkin is under immense pressure to make their privatized Cerner EHR interoperable. It’s pretty clear that the Trump HHS wants to do something about the frustrating and ineffective health IT policies that led to the 21st Century Cures Act information blocking provisions and that they’re hoping to leverage the $1 Trillion of federal spending in healthcare as an alternative to heavy-handed regulation.  This is all good but what can they actually do? Most of Secretary Azar’s talk is about disruption: “In fact, it will require some degree of federal intervention — perhaps even an uncomfortable degree. That may sound surprising coming from an administration that deeply believes in the power of markets and competition. But the status quo is far from a competitive free market in the economic sense of the term, and healthcare is such a complex system, that facilitating a competitive, value-based marketplace is going to be disruptive to existing actors.” And most of Administrator Verma’s talk is about patient contro...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs