What’s Next for Healthcare?

The Hill hosted a Future of Healthcare Summit to address critical issues in healthcare, from the Medicare for All proposals made by Democratic presidential hopefuls to the opioid crisis. Speakers included policymakers, health officials, and industry leaders, on both sides of the aisle.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), for example, took a critical stance on the idea of Medicare for All at the summit. His statements are summarized here. His concerns are practical; “We can’t even pay for Medicare for some,” he said, referring to an earlier report that Medicare will exceed its hospital insurance fund by 2026. Manchin, accordingly, prefers to fix the Affordable Care Act rather than create an entirely new system.

Another issue discussed at the summit was that of data security. As health care becomes increasingly digitized, the risk to people’s privacy rises, as evidenced by recent data breaches. Lawmakers are responding to these breaches, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) by reaching out to health care groups for input on strategies to improve cybersecurity, and Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) by introducing the Protecting Personal Health Data Act. Read more about this here.

High-cost drugs are another upcoming issue in the health care world, discussed in this Hill article. Innovative cures may merit a high price, but some companies are asking such massive sums for potentially life-saving solutions that they are inaccessible to the people who need them. Accordingly, lawmakers are trying to come up with solutions to make these drugs more affordable, such as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has considered allowing Medicaid to pay for drugs over time.

In the same vein, Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY.) called for the cost of insulin to be lowered in an op-ed on The Hill, available here; he notes that insulin prices have doubled in the last seven years, and tripled in the decade prior, that out-of-pocket insulin costs can exceed $300 a vial, and that patients are often racking up debt or skipping doses with serious health consequences. Reed is pushing for transparency from insulin manufacturers and has introduced the SPIKE Act, which would require justification for price hikes. Likewise, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) has expressed his concern in a recent op-ed about the prices for drugs that treat cancer and is also pushing for transparency to lower costs.

Meanwhile, Reps. David Trone (D-Md.) and Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) wrote into The Hill, responding to issues of addiction raised at the conference. Trone drew attention back to the opioid crisis and its ongoing effects and described the steps being taken to combat it. Norcross called for enforcement of the 2008 requirement that insurance cover mental health and substance-use disorders to the same extent physical ailments are covered, and for continued funding and new strategies to deal with substance abuse.

Finally, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) criticized the Trump administration as “sabotaging our health system” by destabilizing the health care market and creating difficulties in accessing it. She cites specific efforts the administration has made to reduce access, including supporting attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act. Baldwin has responded by supporting the ENROLL Act to restore funding for the Navigator, which had previously been reduced by the Trump administration and by introducing the No Junk Plans Act to reel back the administration’s expansion of junk insurance plans.

From data security to drug prices, The Hill’s Future of Healthcare Summit covered a lot of ground. These issues in health care and the responses proposed to solve them continue to develop.

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