Accountable care organization formation is associated with integrated systems but not high medical spending.

By David I. Auerbach, Hangsheng Liu, Peter S. Hussey, Christopher Lau, and Ateev Mehrotra
Health Affairs, October 2013
 
“[P]roponents hope that ACOs will deliver better quality and outcomes … and have lower costs. Independent analysts have projected savings for ACOs [endnote 3], and a recent evaluation of an ongoing private prototype has found evidence of savings and quality improvement [endnote 4].”
 
Endnote 3: “Congressional Budget Office, Budget options, volume 1: health care: CBO;2008 Aug…..”
 
Endnote 4: “Song Z, …, et al. The “Alternative Quality Contract,” based on a global budget, lowered medical spending and improved quality. Health Aff (Millwood). 2012;31:1885-94.”
 
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/32/10/1781.abstract

Comment:

By Kip Sullivan, J.D. The “accountable care organization” is the latest health policy fad to captivate lawmakers. The term was invented at a meeting of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission on November 9, 2006. Despite the vague definition of ACO, and despite the absence of any evidence supporting claims made for ACOs, Congress included in the Affordable Care Act provisions authorizing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to initiate an ACO program. CMS has designated some 250 entities as Medicare ACOs.
 
The two sentences quoted above indicate that even as of mid-2013, seven years after the ACO label was invented and four years after Democrats inserted ACO provisions into the legislation that was to become the Affordable Care Act, ACO proponents must either leave their praise for ACOs undocumented or misrepresent the research on ACOs. The authors of these two sentences chose the latter approach. They cited a study by the Congressional Budget Office which found that ACOs would have almost no impact on Medicare spending, and they cited a study of an ACO-like entity in Massachusetts which found the entity is generating higher, not lower, total health care spending.
 
The two sentences quoted above are from a paper by David Auerbach and colleagues designed to determine where the 250 Medicare ACOs are forming. They reported they are more likely to form where provider consolidation is higher, notably the Midwest and the Northeast. Because the paper simply asked where ACOs are forming, there was no need for the authors to praise ACOs. However, as the quote above indicates, the authors chose to do so. And, given the state of the research on ACOs, they were reduced to exaggerating one study and misrepresenting another in order to “document” their praise.
 
The first study cited by Auerbach et al. was the 2008 report to Congress by the Congressional Budget Office. In that report, the CBO analyzed 115 health care reform proposals or “options.” Option number 37 was the ACO, although CBO didn’t label it that way. CBO called it a “bonus-eligible organization.”  The CBO stated: “Under this option, groups of providers meeting certain qualifications would have the opportunity to participate … in Medicare as bonus-eligible organizations (BEOs). The concept of BEOs is similar to the accountable care organization models proposed by some researchers” [p. 72]. After describing the BEO in the terms CMS would use several years later when it announced its definition of an ACO, the CBO concluded: “This option would reduce Medicare spending … by $5.3 billion over the 2010-2019 period” [p. 73].  http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2009/3/11%20aco/cbohealthoption37.pdf
 
Auerbach et al. should have known that five billion dollars is a minuscule portion of a decade of Medicare spending. The 2010 National Health Expenditure Accounts estimated total Medicare spending over the 2010-2019 period would be more than 7 trillion dollars — $7,135,000,000 to be more precise (my calculation using the numbers shown for Medicare in Table 3
http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/proj2009.pdf)  If we divide $5.3 billion into $7.135 trillion, the savings CBO said ACOs would achieve turns out to be less than one-tenth of one percent of Medicare spending.
 
The second paper Auerbach et al. cited – a 2012 paper published in Health Affairs by Song et al. – has already been the subject of two letters published in Health Affairs as well as a comment by Don McCanne on this blog https://www.pnhp.org/news/2013/june/academyhealths-ill-judged-choice-of-the-2013-article-of-the-year. The letter writers (I was one of them) pointed out an extremely obvious defect in the Song paper: The title of the paper claimed the ACO-like entity was saving money when the text stated it wasn’t. Despite the two letters and Don’s comment, Auerbach et al. chose to misrepresent the Song paper, and the editors of Health Affairs let them do it.
 
Auerbach et al.’s misuse of research is not an isolated example. Over the last several decades, a culture of permissiveness has developed within the US health services research community. This culture tolerates exaggeration and misrepresentation, especially when the exaggeration or misrepresentation promotes the managed care ideology that dominates the health policy debate in this country. As we contemplate how President Obama and the Democrats find themselves burdened by an Affordable Care Act that is not affordable, we should begin our analysis with this question: What role did the US health policy community play in causing policy-makers to think ACOs would make the ACA affordable?

My Take: The art of becoming big: the dilemma of mergers & acquisitions in health care

By Mitch Morris, MD, Vice Chairman and National Health care Provider Lead, Deloitte LLP
Deloitte, Health Care Current, November 12, 2013 Consolidation has transformed nearly every U.S. industry—manufacturing, retail, life sciences and hospitality — you name it. The U.S. health care industry is well into another round of consolidation. Already, according to the American Hospital Association, 3,007 hospitals (roughly 53 percent) are part of a health system. The industry went through a round of consolidation in the 1990’s but many would say that, other than better access to the debt market, the resulting health systems were, for the most part, holding companies and not operators that had a focus on economies of scale or reduced costs. According to Irving Levin Associates, in 2012 there was twice the number of hospital mergers as compared to 2009 and this shows no sign of slowing down. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has served as a catalyst to accelerate the consolidation movement, which seems to have taken on a life of its own. Several trends are beginning to emerge across the industry: *  As reimbursement rates continue their downward trend and the costs of maintaining infrastructure and regulatory compliance march ever higher, the acute care industry seeks scale to better manage costs. Many acute care players are beginning to reduce costs through economies of scale, including the implementation of shared services, programmatic integration and consolidation, selective sourcing and addressing clinical effectiveness. The hope is that costs can be shaved by as much as 30 percent, which is certainly not a goal that can be achieved simply by headcount reduction. *  The stand-alone hospital may be an endangered species—many smaller organizations simply cannot afford to invest in keeping up with facilities, upgrading IT capabilities, attracting the best clinicians, or playing an active role in the emerging payment model innovation game. Nor do they all have the market clout to be considered essential players in narrow health plan networks. As margins shrink and access to capital becomes more difficult, even hospitals in affluent communities are feeling the pinch. *  Health plans, which also continue to consolidate, are dipping their toes into the provider business through the acquisition of medical groups. Many are also developing capabilities to manage population health. So is bigger better? How big is big enough? And can a system be too big? It’s not uncommon for mergers to fail to produce expected benefits for the new organization or the communities they serve. But there is some data to suggest that, by some measures of performance, hospital acquisitions do produce a benefit. A Deloitte Center for Health Solutions report, Hospital Consolidation: Analysis of Acute Sector M&A Activity, recently studied hospitals that were acquired in 2007 and 2008 and found that, over several years, the acquired hospitals had increased volumes and improved margins compared to a cohort of similar size (case mix adjusted) that was not acquired. The benefit was most pronounced when the acquirer was a national chain as compared to a regional system. We are quickly moving toward needing a larger scale to successfully compete. In the 90’s we did not have the same economic or legislative imperative to achieve higher value in a lower cost structure. Now we do. And those organizations that don’t get both the art and science of this transition are likely to find themselves in a difficult position. **** An online poll of Health Care Current readers (results as of 11/12/13, 1:47 PM EST): There are many factors driving consolidation in health care, but I believe the greatest is… 37.84%  Margin constraints such as declining reimbursement rates and costs of infrastructure 10.81%  The increasing complexity of regulatory compliance 51.35%  Companies vying to remain in a competitive market position 00.00%  Consumer demand 00.00%  Innovation and new technologies http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/Insights/Browse-by-Content-Type/Newsletters/health-care-current/4a2992c0bab42410VgnVCM3000003456f70aRCRD.htm Deloitte report: “Hospital Consolidation: Analysis of Acute Sector M&A Activity” (26 pp): http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/Center%20for%20health%20solutions/us_dchs_2013HospitalConsolidation_05292013.pdf

Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D. This Deloitte report reveals that hospital merger and acquisitions are occurring at an accelerated pace. Is that good or is that bad? The answer depends on whether you believe that hospitals should be run like businesses, trying to obtain competitive advantages in the health care marketplace, or if you believe that they should be run as a service organization, emphasizing patient care as its predominant role in the community. Consolidation through merger and acquisition increases market clout. It is anti-competitive, giving the merged entity a larger share of the market. Because of the ability to negotiate better rates, prices go up without the need to provide additional services and amenities that might be more attractive to patients. There is less need to improve quality  when competitors are less able to increase revenues that might be allocated for their own quality improvements. Private sector consolidation leading to oligopolies or monopolies result in the opposite of what markets are supposed to bring us. They result in lower quality and higher costs. Yet health care reform is supposed to bring us higher quality at lower costs. Maybe we overuse the example of a fire department, but it is a useful analogy. We think of the fire department as a service organization, always there when we need it to put out fires or to perform other community service functions. We don’t think of it as a business that competes in the marketplace. We don’t shop for fire services based on price and quality. We simply pay for them through the tax system, and we expect that the fire personnel will continue to take pride in the services that they provide to the community. Health care should be the same. Hospitals should be service organizations, always there for when we need them. Instead of us shopping prices, whether directly or through our insurers, they should be financed through the tax system – using global budgets just as fire departments do. And quality? That is automatic and stems from the fundamental moral fiber of dedicated health care professionals, as long as they are not corrupted by the business element that is increasing its presence to fulfill its mission of using private market business tools, such as consolidation, to maximize market share. Yet, consolidation of a public service entity can be used to improve efficiency, quality, and value. The readers of Deloitte’s Health Care Current likely represent the business oriented element in health care. It is interesting to see the response of the online poll of what they believe is the greatest factor driving consolidation. A majority believe that it is due to the business goal of trying to achieve a better market position. A large minority believes that it is due to declining margins – lower payment rates and higher infrastructure costs. A few believe that it is due to greater regulatory complexity. In general, these concerns that encourage greater consolidation are more business concerns rather than patient service concerns. What is particularly revealing is what these health care businessmen do not believe are contributing to efforts to consolidate. They do not believe that innovation and new technologies are primary driv ers, though they continually tout them as being one of the great products of a business economy. When service is the goal, new innovation would be adopted based more on patient benefit rather than on business opportunities afforded by the technology. In a service model, efficiency could be improved by consolidation if efforts are made to improve efficiency by assuring optimal capacity – neither excess nor deficient capacity. Most impressive in the current phase of health care evolution, wherein the health care business community is foisting on us consumer-driven health care, is that not one of these businessmen believe that consumer demand is a major reason for consolidation. It is not about the patient; it’s about businesses and markets. We need to change that. We could if we adopted our own single payer national health program, dedicated to patient service.

MedPAC Toys with Asking ACOs to Assume Some Risk

By Kerry Young
The Commonwealth Fund, November 7, 2013 Medicare may need to ask accountable care organizations (ACOs) to accept some financial risk as part of a larger effort to make health care both more effective and less expensive, members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) recently said. While not making an official recommendation, many MedPAC members said that they favored increased use of a two-sided approach for accountable care organizations, meaning that they enter arrangements in which they would share in both potentials savings and losses. The alternative is a one-sided arrangement, with no potential for shared losses for the ACOs. “Ultimately, these ACOs need to be accountable for delivering on outcomes including cost lower than fee-for-service,” which is Medicare’s more traditional payment model, said MedPAC member Scott Armstrong of Group Health Cooperative in Seattle. Several MedPAC members said that medical practices and hospitals would need time to adjust to the notion of risk-sharing, and should be allowed some time to operate under agreements that only shared savings to adjust to this new model. MedPAC members also stressed the need for ACOs to build greater ties with the people whose medical outcomes will determine the success of cost-sharing models. “How in the world can a group be accountable for care for a population of patients that they don’t have a relationship with?” asked MedPAC Commissioner Armstrong. MedPAC Chairman Glenn M. Hackbarth said that policymakers will need to keep in mind what payment alternatives remain for medical practices and hospitals in designing any changes for ACOs. The old traditional Medicare fee-for-service model encourages “a volume-focused business,” he said. “For a voluntary ACO, you have got to make the terms really delicious” to compete widely against the model, he said. But, the success of the ACO program may not rest on how common they become, he said. The ACO programs may be most attractive to physician groups, and less so to hospital groups and larger university health programs, he added. “If all of the academic medical centers are out, if there are no hospital based ACOs, if they are all sponsored by physician organizations, is that necessarily a bad thing?” Hackbarth said. “I could imagine that, in fact, that may be ultimately the most sustainable model on an ACO, and trying to jimmy the rules so that it attractive to academic medical centers may compromise your design.” http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Newsletters/Washington-Health-Policy-in-Review/2013/Nov/November-11-2013/MedPAC-Toys-With-Asking-ACOs-to-Assume-Some-Risk.aspx?omnicid=16

Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D. MedPAC, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, has the important function of providing to Congress and CMS advice regarding Medicare payments. Since MedPAC is where the action is, it is helpful to understand the committee members’ views on what has been touted as the most important provision of the Affordable Care Act that would provide greater efficiency and lower costs in health care – the accountable care organizations (ACOs). Based on the members’ comments, it is not difficult to see why others are having difficulties designing ACOs. Although they suggest that the ACOs should bear some financial risk for the services provided, they express caution in making the transition since physicians are apt to prefer the current fee-for-service model – a model that ACO advocates wish to replace – over a model that is designed to reduce spending partly by placing physicians at financial risk. Why would a physician who is being paid for all of the services being provided want to replace that with a model that extracts financial penalties for providing that same level of care? Also it is somewhat insulting to the physicians who believe that are trying to provide optimal care to be accused of pushing extra services purely for the money (likely some do, but my personal observation is that such behavior is uncommon). ACOs are also a bizarre model of coordinated care since the participating providers are selected by the providers themselves and not by the patient. It is difficult to see how the ACOs could be fully accountable for the patients’ care when the patients are not bound to the ACOs. How can you make the physicians responsible for the spending when the patient is referred for a $400 imaging study within the ACO, but the patient decides to get a $2000 study outside of the ACO? MedPAC Chairman Glenn Hackbarth even suggests that academic medical centers and other hospitals should be left out of the ACOs, leaving them to physician organizations. When the ACOs are supposed to achieve success by bundling services for a given clinical circumstance, such as heart valve replacement or a kidney transplant, how do you leave the hospital out of the bundled package? And do we really want academic medical centers to be excluded from the financing model? Of course, the insurers have been very interested in taking over the management of the ACOs, but their concept is not much different from their old managed care models in which the patients are made captive through the insurance plans they have – a model that angered patients and physicians alike. It is fine to look for efficiencies and quality improvement in health care delivery, but we should not let the ACO craze distract us from advocacy for a model that we already know improves quality and contains costs – a single payer national health program.

Editorial: Who first said, “You can keep the insurance you have”?

By Don McCanne
November 8, 2013 Considering our national health expenditures, our health care financing and delivery systems are a disaster. It is fully apparent that the Affordable Care Act will fall woefully short of what is needed, and even offset some of the minimal gains with changes that will make many of us worse off by passing more costs directly onto us when we become ill (higher deductibles and other cost sharing), and by further limiting our choices of physicians and hospitals (shifting to narrow provider networks). At a time that it is imperative that we address policy issues to try to straighten up our system, we abandon reason and propel forward with politics as usual. President Obama’s political enemies, well supported by the media – including editorialists – are now expressing shock, shock that he lied to us when he told us that we could keep the insurance we have, if we like it. He was not the author of this sound bite provided to him for political campaigning, so where did it come from? Let’s go back five years, beginning before Sen. Obama was even the Democratic nominee for president, and look at some of our Quote of the Day messages beginning then:

Is “keeping the insurance you have” your choice?

By Don McCanne
February 6, 2008 How many of you, under age 85, have the same health insurance plan that you had twenty years ago? None? Why did you change? (Several possibilities listed.) What is the obvious conclusion? Health insurance coverage on a continual basis is practically non-existent in the private insurance market. In almost all of the instances listed, the insured individual was not granted the option of “keeping the insurance you have.” Most polls on health care reform continue to ask many of the same questions as they have over the past couple of decades, but there is one new question. The pollsters are now asking if you support reform that would allow you “to keep the insurance you have.” For healthier individuals who believe that they have good insurance, this concept polls very well. In fact, the other questions in the polls are now tailored to reinforce this simple concept. https://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/february/is-keeping-the-insurance-you-have-your-choice

Statement of Common Purpose

Health Care for America Now!
(Undated, but referenced in 2008) A choice of a private insurance plan, including keeping the insurance you have if you like it… http://healthcareforamericanow.org/about-us/statement-of-common-purpose/

“Keeping the insurance you have” – Don’t believe it!

By Don McCanne
July 11, 2008 Pause for a minute. Think back to the insurance you had twenty years ago. Remember? Now do you still have precisely that same coverage? Unless you are over 85 and have been in the traditional Medicare program for the past twenty years, it is highly likely that you do not. So why do you no longer have the better coverage that you had twenty years ago? You may have changed jobs, likely more than once, and lost the coverage that your prior employer provided. Your employer may have changed plans because of ever-increasing insurance premiums. Frequently your insurer introduces plan innovations such as larger deductibles, a change from fixed-dollar co-payments to higher coinsurance percentages, tiering of your cost sharing for services and products, reduction in the benefits covered, dollar caps on payouts, and other innovations all designed to keep premiums competitive in a market of rapidly rising health care costs. You may have lost coverage when your age disqualified you from participating in your parents’ plan. You may have found that health benefit programs have been declining as an incentive offered by new employers. Your children may have lost coverage under the Children’s Health Insurance Program when your income, though modest, disqualified your family from the program. Your union may not have been able to negotiate the continuation of the high-quality coverage that you previously held. Your employer may have reduced or eliminated the retirement coverage that you were promised but not guaranteed. Your employer may have filed for bankruptcy without setting aside the legacy costs of their pensions and retiree health benefit programs. You may have decided to start your own small business and found that you could not qualify for coverage because of your medical history, even if relatively benign, or maybe your small business margins are so narrow that you can’t afford the premiums. You may have been covered previously by a small business owner whose entire group plan was cancelled at renewal because one employee developed diabetes, or another became HIV infected. Your COBRA coverage may have lapsed and you found that the individual insurance market offered you no realistic options. You may have retired before Medicare eligibility, only to find that premiums were truly unaffordable or coverage was not even available because of preexisting medical problems. https://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/july/keeping-the-insurance-you-have-dont-believe-it

Will grandfathering save our current private plans?

By Don McCanne
June 23, 2010 The opponents of reform, especially the Republicans in Congress, are making a big deal out of the fact that the Affordable Care Act breaks President Obama’s promise that you will be able to keep the insurance plan you have. The Obama administration is countering by publicizing the new regulations that will allow plans in place on March 23, 2010 to be grandfathered, supposedly assuring that you will be able to keep your plan if you had it on that date. Actually, this is a silly debate. As explained in my comment two years ago, except for those individuals on Medicare or other fiscally sound retiree programs, almost no one gets to keep the insurance he or she has. Rather than stabilizing existing coverage, the regulations that would grandfather plans make it less likely, in an environment of increasing health care costs, that existing plans would continue to be offered without significant changes. In an effort to make the insurance plans more affordable, further adjustments in deductibles and coinsurance are almost inevitable, and the ever-changing insurance marketplace will surely result in changes in insurance companies selected. Insurance price shoppers, who are mostly healthy, will be much more sensitive to size of the premiums than they would be to cost sharing; this is precisely what has happened throughout the individual market. These pressures would accelerate the decline in grandfathered plans. “Keeping the insurance you have” was only a slogan used to market the reform proposal. It wasn’t a serious long term strategy. Instead of wasting time in another political dogfight – this time over grandfathering – we should move forward with supporting policies that will work for everyone – like a single payer national health program. https://www.pnhp.org/news/2010/june/will-grandfathering-save-our-current-private-plans Comment, November 8, 2013: “Liar!” Is that the best lesson that we can learn from President Obama’s decision to accept the recommendation of his political advisers to use the sound bite, “You can keep the insurance you have, if that’s what you want”? The fact that this is the framing of the current keep-the-insurance-you-have discourse demonstrates not only how acrimonious the Washington political environment has become, it also shows the ineptitude of the media. Not only do they buy this framing when there is a far more compelling message in this mess, they also serve as dupes, propagating the biting, counter-productive message of the Obama opponents. Repeating my comment from 2010, “Instead of wasting time in another political dogfight… we should move forward with supporting policies that will work for everyone – like a single payer national health program.” That’s the lesson we should learn.

Professionalism and Caring for Medicaid Patients — The 5% Commitment?

By Lawrence P. Casalino, M.D., Ph.D.
The New England Journal of Medicine, November 7, 2013 Medicaid is an important federal–state partnership that provides health insurance for more than one fifth of the U.S. population — 73 million low-income people in 2012. The Affordable Care Act will expand Medicaid coverage to millions more. But 30% of office-based physicians do not accept new Medicaid patients, and in some specialties, the rate of nonacceptance is much higher — for example, 40% in orthopedics, 44% in general internal medicine, 45% in dermatology, and 56% in psychiatry. Physicians practicing in higher-income areas are less likely to accept new Medicaid patients. Physicians who do accept new Medicaid patients may use various techniques to severely limit their number — for example, one study of 289 pediatric specialty clinics showed that in the 34% of these clinics that accepted new Medicaid patients, the average waiting time for an appointment was 22 days longer for children on Medicaid than for privately insured children. Physicians have good reasons for not accepting Medicaid patients, as I learned from direct experience as a member of a nine-physician primary care practice in California. We accepted Medicaid patients, but it was difficult. Medicaid’s payment rate was very low — we lost money on each Medicaid visit. When referrals were necessary, we often had to personally ask specialists to accept our patient. Administratively, it was not simple to obtain payment from Medicaid for our services, in part because some patients frequently moved between eligibility and ineligibility for the program. In addition, it was time-consuming for our physicians and staff to deal with the Medicaid pharmaceutical formulary and to obtain prior authorization for Medicaid patients to see specialists and obtain imaging studies. There are additional reasons — beyond low payment rates, administrative complexity, and problems obtaining specialist care — why physicians may be reluctant to see Medicaid patients. Medicaid patients often have complicated behavioral health, transportation, and social service needs that require physician and staff time. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental reason why physicians should strongly consider providing care for at least a reasonable number of Medicaid patients. It is a core professional principle that physicians should put the patient’s interest first; refusing to care for vulnerable, socioeconomically disadvantaged Medicaid patients seems incompatible with this principle. Many medical schools ask their students to accept the World Health Organization’s Declaration of Geneva (a modified version of the Hippocratic Oath), which states in part that “I will not permit considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient.” Physicians who are reluctant to provide care for Medicaid patients can argue, with justice, that policymakers are trying to make medicine as market-driven as possible, that physicians are increasingly expected to respond to market incentives and market constraints, and that no business in other sectors of the economy is asked to provide a service that loses money year after year. Many physicians, however, earn very high incomes, and some of the highest-paid specialties are the least willing to care for Medicaid patients. Would it be reasonable to ask all physicians to commit to providing care for enough Medicaid enrollees so that at least 5% of each physician’s practice consisted of Medicaid patients (assuming sufficient demand)? We live in an era in which, for better or for worse, market-based solutions are dominant and policymakers tend to view physicians as self-interested actors. Little or no attention is paid to physician professionalism or to the possible effects of policies on professionalism. Policies that are based on this view may be justifiable if many physicians are indeed seeking to maximize their incomes and refusing to accept even a slight reduction in income as the price for helping to provide care to the most vulnerable patients in our society. A 5%-commitment campaign would be a meaningful, highly visible demonstration of physician professionalism — of putting patients first. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1310974

Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D. The expansion of Medicaid for low-income patients is one of the more troublesome features of the Affordable Care Act. Because of low payment rates, many physicians, especially high-income specialists, already refuse to accept Medicaid patients. Increasing the burden on those physicians who do accept Medicaid is apt to result in a pushback wherein access may be further impaired. What can be done? Lawrence Cassalino has provided us with an excellent description of the dilemma, but I’m afraid that his 5% solution – physicians devoting 5% of their practices to Medicaid – will fail since it depends on physician professionalism, of putting patients first. After a career of trying to obtain specialized care for Medicaid patients, it was quite clear that that level of professionalism was not ubiquitous in my community, and I doubt that it is in most other communities. Relying on the pure goodness of physicians will not work because there are not enough so oriented to meet the need. One important measure in ACA is the expansion of funding for federally qualified health centers. These centers improve access for vulnerable populations, though they still have difficulties obtaining adequate support of specialists. Today, the government announced a $150 million grant to assist these community health centers. $150 million? Unless the government becomes serious about community center funding, and unless something is done to attract specialists to support these centers, we cannot expect them to fill the void either. There is a clear solution. We could establish a single payer national health program in which everyone has the same coverage and access to care. That may or may not renew the commitment of today’s physicians to professionalism, but at least it would create the appearance that patients would be placed first. For individuals considering a future career in medicine, professionalism would be a given.