As Republicans keep debating how best to undermine Obamacare, the law’s liberal advocates are focusing on what they think should happen next for healthcare reform.
On Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell will address a gathering of healthcare advocates hosted by Families USA, which this week released a set of proposals for how to correct parts of the healthcare system the Affordable Care Act never fixed.
As they see it, the law’s biggest accomplishment was extending health coverage to about 10 million Americans through new online insurance marketplaces and Medicaid expansion. But it didn’t do a lot to heal some other big problems afflicting the U.S. healthcare system — namely, wasteful spending and poor quality of care.
“The quest to achieve high-quality, affordable health coverage and care did not start with, nor should it end with, the ACA, and there’s a great deal of work that lies ahead,” said Families USA Director Ron Pollack, whose group worked closely with policymakers while the law was being crafted.
The group is calling on states and regulators to enact a number of measures, like requiring insurers to reduce consumers’ out-of-pocket costs, allowing mid-level providers like nurse practitioners and dental hygienists to do more, and ensuring that plan networks make enough doctors available to patients.
It also wants some parts of the healthcare law expanded, like increasing the insurance subsidies for low and middle-income people and expanding Medicaid in the 23 states that have rejected it so far.
Community Catalyst, another health advocacy group that’s championed the healthcare law, released a similar set of recommendations last week aimed at lowering per capita health spending and improving patient care.
“It is a huge accomplishment that millions and millions of people who have not had health coverage have it and they have access to care they didn’t have,” said the group’s deputy director, Susan Sherry. “Now [the goal] is to make sure coverage is good.”
As the second year of enrollment winds down, the Obama administration is touting its successes, especially compared to least year’s technological difficulties. But just down the street, congressional Republicans are plotting how to repeal or change the law with their new majority.
Earlier this month the House passed a bill changing the law’s definition of full-time work that determines which workers get coverage and which don’t. The Senate may vote on that measure as well as a bill repealing the law’s tax on medical devices. President Obama is expected to veto both.
Pollack said he doesn’t think the GOP will abandon its efforts before the 2016 presidential election. But once President Obama leaves office, he predicts the GOP will begin to accept the law.
“Part of the obsession about Obamacare is the Republican obsession with undermining President Obama, and when President Obama leaves the White House … I think some of the obsession will also diminish,” Pollack said.
