Paul Keckley sees one result of all the financial and policy battles going on around the Affordable Care Act: higher costs for everyone. In his second weekly memo as a consultant, he wants Congress and state leaders to drop the partisan gamesmanship and lift the ACA out of the political fight. He lists three reasons:
- The recovery is weak.
- Delaying health insurance exchanges would lead to higher costs.
- Employer sponsored insurance is at risk.
First, Keckley says that the long-term health cost containment parts of the law would be undermined if they fall into the trenches of the budget battles on the hill: “And health costs would likely return to the range of 6% annual increases until the market adjusted. Insurance premiums would soar and coverage would fall.”
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
Second, the focus should be about how to make sure the exchanges work and how to verify eligibility for coverage and subsidies, not the worthwhileness of exchanges. If the GOP manages to scare and confuse people into shunning the insurance marketplaces, it “will mean higher costs for those with insurance who pay the hidden taxes resulting from cost shifting.”
His biggest concern is the third issue: large employers who are tired of carrying the healthcare costs for everyone. He says the C suite’s main issue is with health costs, not the Affordable Care Act:
The majority of employers think the ACA’s shortcoming is its failure to reduce health costs. If the ACA becomes entangled in such a way as to add to its confusion, more employers will drop coverage altogether.
What should Senators and Representatives do instead of throwing funding for the ACA into the government shutdown and debt ceiling fight? Keckley has four suggestions:
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
- The ACA is the law. It can be improved.
- Improving quality and reducing the long-term costs simultaneously are goals.
- Insurance is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
- The results must be verifiable, transparent, significant and achievable.
It’s time to address the budget, and it’s time to fix the ACA. The two can be done simultaneously if goals are clear and partisan one-upmanship set aside.
