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Health Reform, Government Initiative, and the Future of American Health Care
Book chapter

Health Reform, Government Initiative, and the Future of American Health Care

Mother of Invention
29 Nov 2013

Abstract

Obamacare Health care reimbursement Health insurance Health reform Free-market health care Administrative complexity Universal coverage Bundled payments Medicaid Affordable Care Act
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) culminated a century of efforts to achieve universal health coverage. They increasingly focused on market approaches, and the ACA followed this trend by relying on private insurance companies to expand coverage. It facilitates a market for individual policies and expands Medicaid, which is widely administered by private plans. Obama garnered political supportfor the law through alliances with key industry sectors that stood to gain, including insurers, hospitals, physicians, and pharmaceutical firms. The ACA thereby extends to new lengths the public-private partnership underlying all American health care. Future reforms should address the partnership’s most glaring failings. These would transition reimbursement from fee-for-service to bundled payments, reduce administrative complexity, limit medicine’s specialist tilt, lessen the profession’s commercialization, and control the proliferation of expensive technology. Government activism created American health care, and it will always be the essential force in keeping it sustainable andvibrant.

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