Dr David Cutler: Trump Administration's Attention Not on Value-Based Purchasing

The Trump administration’s healthcare priorities have mainly focused on replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or reforming Medicaid, leading to concerns that value-based purchasing efforts will be left in the dust, said David M. Cutler, PhD, of Harvard University.

Transcript (slightly modified)

Do you think this country’s trajectory of moving to value-based care will be altered under the current administration?

The move towards value-based care is, of course, an extremely important one. I have not heard the Trump administration say what its philosophy is about this. I am worried on 2 counts. One is, many of the programs that the Obama administration had started are either being slowed down or being cancelled entirely, which I don’t think is good news. But second, I also think their attention is elsewhere, so their attention is on repealing the ACA, or what should be in a replacement bill, or on Medicaid and work requirements.

Their attention isn’t on value-based purchasing. That suggests to me that they’re not going to be actively thinking about it, and this is one of those topics that you kind of have to put the effort into doing, because it doesn’t happen on its own.