New Year’s resolution: End Obamacare partisanship

More than a year after his nomination, Dr. Vivek Murthy was officially confirmed as the next Surgeon General of the United States. 

Given the challenges facing our health sector, the nation should breathe a sigh of relief. It’s an important job and the confirmation process took far too long. And this year should prove decisive in determining the success of Obamacare — and Murthy, together with key stakeholders, will have an essential role to play in implementing the next phase of the law and ensuring its success.  

{mosads}Unfortunately, an aggressive marketing effort from the Obama administration effort won’t be sufficient. In order to advance access to affordable care for all Americans, Democrats and Republicans will need to work together in the new Congress. What’s required is a bipartisan effort to build on the law’s successes, learn from its mistakes, and navigate whatever obstacles 2015 may present.  

In the past, rigid opposition to Obamacare was a useful political tactic for Republican lawmakers. But now that the GOP is in control of Congress, they have a responsibility to work with Democrats to make sure the law works.  

This will be especially true in 2015, when a number of significant Obamacare provisions take effect. These include the first phase of the employer mandate, as well as a policy that bases physician pay on the quality, not quantity, of the care provided. 

As with any significant legislative effort, these provisions will likely need some fine-tuning once they take effect. In a Republican Congress, making such adjustments demands a commitment to working across party lines to craft pragmatic, workable fixes.  

But the biggest uncertainty surrounding Obamacare flows from a Supreme Court case set for early next year. At issue is whether residents in the 36 states that rely on the federal government’s coverage portal are eligible for insurance subsidies. 

The court is expected to issue a decision in late June. If it rules in favor the plaintiffs, roughly 7.3 million Americans could lose $36 billion in Obamacare subsidies. Unable to afford coverage, the ranks of the uninsured would quickly swell to catastrophic levels.  

Preventing this mass exodus from the insurance market would require a coordinated effort between Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services, the surgeon general, and many others. In anticipation of such a scenario, members of the new Congress must come prepared to work with the Democrats to protect access to medical coverage. 

Even if the Supreme Court decides not to roll back insurance subsidies in federal-exchange states, there are still plenty of opportunities to improve Obamacare in a bipartisan manner.  

For instance, Democrats and Republicans could work together on strengthening Obamacare’s technological infrastructure. The number of Americans purchasing coverage from one of the exchanges is expected to grow from 9 million next year to 40 million in 2018, according to consulting firm Accenture.   

This level of traffic demands an exchange system far less prone to glitches and errors than the current one. That’s something the new Congress can set about building right now.  

An effort to make the exchange more user-friendly is also needed. After all, most Americans are not used to purchasing their own health coverage. A recent study in the journal Health Affairs found that, among Americans at whom the health exchanges are aimed, fully 60 percent have trouble understanding basic insurance concepts.  

What’s more, relevant plan details can be difficult to find on the marketplace websites. As a result, customers are often unaware of what, exactly, they are signing up for. In many cases, patients are surprised to find that their plan cover only a small percentage of a costly yet necessary medication.  For some HIV/AIDS patients covered through Obamacare plans, out-of-pocket medication costs can run more than $1,000 a month. Here too, a bipartisan effort to build a more transparent, intuitive exchange infrastructure could address one of the most serious impediments to healthcare access. 

Meeting the challenges of 2015 without compromising access to affordable, quality care will be impossible unless Democrats and Republicans can find ways to work together. 

Potarazu is CEO of Vital Spring Technologies.