CC07
Health Care Reform in the United States of America Offers Opportunity to the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers
Objectives: To Address the Opportunities for longituninal Comprehensive Care for MS Patients Under the Affordable Care Act
Methods: Instrirutional and Caregiver Strategies
Results: Unknown, but Promising
Conclusions: A New Role for the CMSC
Health Care Reform in the United States of America (USA) Offers Opportunity to the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis
Centers (CMSC)
Current formalization of health care reform in the USA is embodied in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed by congress and 2010 and the determination of constitutionality of the act found by the United States Supreme Court in 2012. Preceding and following these actions, the content and progress of health care reform in the USA has been marked by rancorous debate, unremitting and so far unsuccessful legislative and legal assaults and intense public debate not lacking social and political divisiveness and public incivility. Yet the ACA, popularly denoted by the term “Obama Care,” is the law of the land. Popular and political reaction to the ACA has been characterized by intense public polarization, and focused upon operational shortcomings and fundamental ideology. The ACA itself owes its genesis to more than political promise. The USA simply could not, as a matter of urgent practicality, afford the national cost of medical care, approaching nearly $3 trillion, and on its seemingly unstoppable way to 20% of national GDP simultaneously leaving about 50 million USA residents without effective access to health care. As a moral matter, the ACA continues the nation’s undone human rights mission. To date, about 13 million people have signed onto insurance exchanges to enroll in ACA-derived medical care, and 7 million have completed that enrollment. As a matter of political necessity, the ACA incorporates the traditional role of the medical insurance industry, and the role of states to deny, by legislative fiat, expansion of family care underMedicaid. Many states choosing the latter route are among the poorest and least healthy in the USA.
The opportunity arises for the CMSC and organizations like it to act with expanded effect in taking a prominent role in how health care for a nation is reshaped. Organizations built around demonstrably effective roles in the organization of out-patient based, multidisciplinary care which integrate missions encompassing patient care, research and education directed at those suffering chronic, disabling illnesses. To effectively accomplish this, such organizations need to establish facility independence, strengthen the bonds of relatedness among mission elements, seek the advice of related organizations on an international level, support national global medical budgeting, and joining with the patients and their families, present their case to government, the public and national funding sources which must be persuaded to understand the quality, outcome and cost issues improved by the provision of comprehensive care.