A Burden Now, a Blessing Later?

A Burden Now, a Blessing Later?
Posted by David McCann | July 05, 2012

I’m a lifelong, avid baseball fan, and when others of my ilk pose “best player” questions, I always query back: best over the course of his career, or best at the peak of his abilities? Sandy Koufax had a short career during which he was inconsistent in the early years but more than brilliant for a final few. Don Sutton was at no time regarded as among the best few pitchers, but bit by bit, over 23 years, he compiled a set of numbers that eventually propelled him, like his one-time teammate Koufax, to the Hall of Fame.http://www3.cfo.com/blogs/human-capital-careers/human-capital--careers-blog/2012/07/A-Burden-Now-a-Blessing-Later
Those guys played decades ago. But these days, when I hear people voice opinions on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — which has been quite often the past two-plus years, reaching a crescendo recently — I notice a reminiscent whiff of that baseball dichotomy. By that I mean, if someone asks me whether I think this law makes sense, I want to rejoin with: over the short term, or over the long term?
In today’s immediacy, the machinations and regulatory interpretations of the law are imposing pain on a host of parties, including health-care providers, insurers, and, most notably to CFO’s audience, companies generally. The costs of compliance are annoying and frustrating. Many are angry at Congress for allegedly overstepping its authority in passing the still-new law, and at the Supreme Court for last week endorsing that supposed faux pas. Some CFOs, as we reported then, are dismayed that they still don’t have closure on the fate of the law, given that the next Congress will probably continue the lively fight over whether to modify or repeal it.
Those are certainly understandable and reasonable objections — even the last one, despite some comments posted to our article that railed against the CFOs quoted in it for sounding like they were too ineffectual to move forward. Please, give these finance chiefs a break. They and their peers strive for efficiency, a goal that is significantly hampered, when it comes to health-care benefits, by having to comply with a law that may or may not exist a year from now.
Still, if even the short-term implications of the law and the court decision are not clear, can anyone say with even modest confidence what the long-term implications might be?
For example, what if the PPACA were allowed to fully flower? If, as the law contemplates, providers were paid based on patient outcomes, rather than on the number of patient visits, procedures performed, and tests ordered? If insurers were forced by the law to reduce administrative costs in order to avoid mandatory customer rebates? If the state health-insurance exchanges that may be created under the law worked so well that many companies could eventually find relief from the burden of paying for workers’ health care at all, not to mention the compliance burden?
Look, I know it’s not as simple as that. The PPACA has many provisions that may be cost factors for corporations in both the short and long terms. The incremental dollars to be pumped into the health-care system by the mandate that almost everyone obtain health insurance might not be enough to pay for all the concessions the insurance industry made, like eliminating annual and lifetime coverage caps and the prohibition on denying coverage to anyone, even those with chronic pre-existing conditions. Additionally, numerous unintended consequences of the law, negative or positive, are almost certain to crop up.
But it was never intended to be an immediate panacea to all of the woes related to health care that plague our society, the economy, and corporate bottom lines. It is a stake in the ground that acknowledges those woes that explicitly says, “There are problems afoot. They need to be dealt with.” And that implicitly says, “Here is a start. And from this start, we can smooth out the law and make it better and fairer over time.”

Companies should, with respect to the health-care arena, climb out of their quarter-to-quarter foxhole, support efforts to gradually improve the system, and look to a farther time horizon. It’s just possible that the view might not be as terrifying as they thought.

Source: