Today it’s pretty obvious that the Presidential is on everyone’s mind. While I don’t plan to discuss the details of the election and the specific results, it’s worth thinking about what Donald Trump in the white house will mean for healthcare IT.
Let’s start off with the easy one: Meaningful Use/MACRA. One doctor tweeted me that now that Trump is President, MACRA will be gone. I don’t think that’s further from the truth. In fact, I really can’t imagine any scenario where the EHR Incentive program (Meaningful Use, which still applies to hospitals and Medicaid) and the MACRA program would be gone. I think they’re here to stay and won’t be altered at all by this election.
The biggest reason for this belief is that Trump is going to have so many other things on the agenda. Not the least of which is ACA (Obamacare), which we’ll get to later in this post, but also a whole suite of other things that he’ll make a priority. Why would Trump want to take on a relatively bipartisan thing like healthcare IT, EHR and MACRA? I don’t think he’ll waste a second on the subject.
Plus, even if Trump wanted to go after the MACRA and EHR incentive legislation, I can’t imagine the Senate and House passing something to replace those programs either. Remember that Trump can propose all he wants, but the Senate and House have to pass it too and both of those groups seem to be firmly behind both efforts. Add this to the previous point and why would Trump go after health IT when it’s unlikely to pass and isn’t a strategic goal of his? Short Answer: He won’t.
My opinion: we’re unlikely to see any change to MACRA and other healthcare IT initiatives.
The trickier part to assess is the impact a Trump presidency will have on the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare). I live in Vegas and I wouldn’t even want to offer odds on what’s going to happen there. The rhetoric out there is to “repeal and replace Obamacare.” What’s not clear to me is if this concept is even practical and possible. There are so many issues with the idea of repealing Obamacare, that I can’t imagine it ever happening. I could see parts of it being repealed, but not the whole thing.
I also think it would be seen as very unfavorable for Trump to roll back things like the pre-existing condition exemption that allows those with pre-existing conditions to get insurance. There are probably a dozen other things like this that would likely be hard to take back without some major backlash and so I think they’ll have to preserve many of these things in whatever they do with Obamacare. Maybe that means a full repeal, but then rolling back in some of the popular pieces of the legislation so they can say they repealed it.
All of this said, I think that Trump will evaluate all options to undermine many of the things that were implemented by Obamacare including the insurance mandate and the insurance exchanges. Most people don’t realize that there’s so much more to Obamacare than just the mandate and exchanges. How he’ll undermine Obamacare and the impact it will have is anybody’s guess. I’m not sure anyone really knows and it’s certainly beyond my political punditry.
Long story short on Obamacare, I have no idea. I know that something’s going to happen because of the strict “Rip and Replace” rhetoric. I just think it’s really hard to predict which parts they’ll be able to rip out at this point and what they’ll replace it with going forward.
No doubt this will keep many in healthcare on edge. Unknowns are always a challenge. While I think the Trump Presidency will likely have a big impact on healthcare, I don’t see it having a big impact for good or bad on healthcare IT. I think the path to healthcare IT is happening and he won’t do anything to really stop it.
Side Note: Check out this interesting lessons learned post by Mr. H at Histalk which talks about the challenge of relying on data. As healthcare enters the world of data in a big way, it’s important to make sure we have a good understanding of what the data really tells us and what it doesn’t.
John , great topic. The a few stated health care polices of the Trump platform are related to increasing HSA accounts, flexibility and use of high deductible health plans, cross state plan sales, and removing mandatory personal health insurance, and state Medicaid expansion. This push can co-exist with value based care as defined by MACRA, which is a separate law from ACA. So despite the ACA adjustments anticiapted, MACRA may proceed with minor edits to referenced HIT standards which are under the ACA umbrella.
Dr. Tom,
Agreed. I don’t see any reason why MACRA would really be touched in any significant way by Trump’s plans for healthcare.