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Roundtable: Costs of Care and the ACA, Part III
Our panelists discuss how both the industry and patients need to drive change to a better understanding of costs of care and what it takes to get patients interested.
Moderator: Laura Palmer
Senior Industry Analyst
Medical Group Management Association
Neel Shah, MD, MPP
Harvard Medical Faculty
Founder, Executive Director of Costs of Care
Peter Goldbach, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Health Dialog
Joe Fifer, CPA
President, CEO
Healthcare Financial Management Association
Our panelists discuss how both the industry and patients need to drive change to a better understanding of costs of care.
Joe Fifer, president and chief executive officer of the Healthcare Financial Management Association said patients are only now starting to get involved in financial considerations in health care because there are now higher deductibles and co-pays.
“That’s what gets people interested in this country, when they have to reach into their own wallets or their own purses,” he said.
Neel Shah, MD, pointed out that the health affordability isn’t a new issue as it was a concern in the mid-’90s, but the difference today is the current expectations surrounding transparency because we now use tools like Yelp! and Travelocity to make other decisions.
However, Peter Goldbach, MD, the chief medical officer of Health Dialog said that transparency and shopping wouldn’t be sufficient to solve affordability.
“We as an industry of people that provide health care, we’ve got to do a better job on affordability,” he said, pointing at changing payment schemes as an opportunity for restructuring.
