Health Care Reform

Whether it encompasses a minor policy change or a complete overhaul, health care reform must begin with a solid financial structure. If that structure weakens over time, the reform cannot last. Reform must also have a continuing source of funding to support it over the long term.

The team at UMass Medical School’s Commonwealth Medicine division helps design that underlying financial structure, along with mechanisms for providing ongoing fiscal support. With both public and private sector experience, our Center for Health Law and Economics staff provide services that fully support health care reform efforts of all types:

• Analyzing current and proposed policies and programs
• Analyzing financing structures
• Developing appropriate fiscal strategies for public agencies
• Negotiating federal approvals, as well as effective amendments and waiver proposals
• Developing the broad base of support essential for any reform effort
• Improving quality and controlling costs without compromising consumers’ access to health care
• Creating effective financing structures
• Providing legal analyses of comprehensive health system reform plans and discrete reform policies
  

Health law experts from our Center for Health Law and Economics were involved in the design, stakeholder strategy development, and implementation of the landmark health care reform act passed in Massachusetts in 2006. Our insight into hospital payment methods, especially Medicare’s inpatient and outpatient prospective payment systems, enabled the state to meet the requirements for a program to cover the remaining uninsured.