Roundtable: Costs of Care and the ACA, Part III

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.

Part 1 | Part 2 |