Health Care Reform is a Journey Not an Event
Monday, July 26th, 2010The recent passage of national health care reform legislation is an important milestone in the process of moving toward providing millions of Americans with access to health insurance. However, significant steps must still be taken in order to achieve the goals established in the legislation.
Specifically, greater clarification is needed to determine how reform will be implemented and, just as important, there is the challenge of effectively dealing with the critical issue of affordability. Health plans and providers have received many questions regarding how they will make the necessary changes within their business to help employers and trading partners comply with the new law.
While most answers are still unclear, we have developed initial comments to many of the questions dealing with the 2010 provisions, including:
Health care business, process, people and technology changes for payor and provider firms:
We will cover these topics in subsequent releases of our blog. We will continue to monitor the detailed discussions during the lengthy implementation process. Our focus will be on taking the time to make sure we help our clients get the implementation of reform right and addressing the most significant issue facing our industry – affordability.
It is important to remember that most of the provisions in the legislation will not go into effect until 2014 or later. The details of implementing legislation can take months, even years to work through the regulatory process. Much of what Congress has passed will require additional regulations to bring further clarity to this new law, and those regulations will truly shape the impact on consumers and employers.
