Repeal – Page 2 – The Health Care Blog

Value (Outcomes/Cost)–A Unifying Concept for Health Reform?

Dec 30, 2010• 5

By RICHARD REECE, MD

In health care, stakeholders have myriad, often conflicting goals, access to services, profitability, high quality, cost containment, safety, convenience, patient-centeredness, and satisfaction.

-Michael Porter PhD, Professor, Harvard Business School

Those who support the new health reform law and those who seek to repeal it look at the new law through vastly different ideological lenses. Each ideological camp has its own implacable, rarely movable spin on what’s important.

But, according to Thomas Lee, MD, associate editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and networks president for Partners Healthcare System in Boston, the search for value (outcomes relative to cost) unites and provides a path forward for competing ideological interests.

In Lee’s words, “The value framework offers a unifying framework for provider organizations that might otherwise be paralyzed by constituents’ fighting for bigger pieces of a shrinking pie (“Putting the Value Framework to Work,” New England Journal of Medicine, and December 23, 2010).

As an ideological and idealistic concept, I would like to think a utopian vision focusing on value is achievable. But I remain dubious because of the nature of American culture. I am also skeptical partly because the concept originates in Boston, which has the highest health costs in the nation but which has scanty evidence that its outcomes are superior. Finally, I am leery because it takes large organizations with interoperable and expensive electronic systems that communicate with each other to measure value (outcomes/costs) for a bewildering number of different diseases with different outcome dimensions (survival, degrees of health recovery, time to return to work, side effects, pain, complications, adverse effects, sustainability, long term consequences) all measured over a longitudinal time frame among diverse stakeholders. Bringing such scattered data points into a single focus with a common understanding among diverse participants over a long time frame strikes me as nearly impossible.

The Grinch that Stole Obamacare

Dec 15, 2010• 10

By DAVID DRANOVE, PhD

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution, better known as the Commerce Clause, states that Congress has the power to “regulate Commerce…among the several States.” To supporters of health reform, the Commerce Clause is the Grinch that stole Obamacare. To opponents, the Commerce Clause might seem like a Sanity Clause (apologies to the Marx Brothers.) One thing now seems certain. Obamacare is on the fast track to the Supreme Court, where a ruling on the Commerce Clause could have far reaching implications for health reform and, frankly, for many other federal interventions into economic activity.

Virginia officials cited the Commerce Clause in arguing that the individual mandate was beyond the power of Congress. U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson agreed with the centrality of the Commerce Clause:

While this case raises a host of complex constitutional issues, all seem to distill to the single question of whether or not Congress has the power to regulate and tax a citizen’s decision to participate in interstate commerce.

Judge Hudson sided with Virginia, stating that “no specifically articulated constitutional authority exists to mandate the purchase of health insurance.”

Judge Hudson does not reject health reform in its entirety. Although he speculates as to whether the bill would have been enacted without the exchange, he notes that the record in the case is insufficient for a final determination and thus he “severs (the individual mandate) with circumspection,” leaving the rest of the bill intact. In doing so he provides a road map to others attempting to strike down the entire legislation, provided they can find some evidence that votes hinged on the inclusion of the exchange.