Sebelius discusses health care, responds to College Republicans

The Affordable Care Act, as well as other Obama administration health care efforts, has made health care more strongly rooted in adding value-based services and better delivery system reforms, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said in a lecture on Tuesday.

The two primary goals of the ACA are affordable health coverage in the market and reform of the health care delivery system in ways that can improve the overall health of the American population, Sebelius said.

She added that over the five years since the ACA has been implemented, it has created a competitive market where there was previously a monopoly on health care coverage and has aided those who were previously locked out of health care because of preexisting limitations.

“Overall, health care costs are trending below our levels of GDP,” Sebelius said. “Health care cost trajectory is beginning to level out, and this has been happening consistently over the past five years.”

The ACA has provisions that say if experimental payment strategies prove effective and at the same don't lower the quality of health care, they can be implemented nationally, she explained. These strategies are designed and tested by the Healthcare Innovation Center, which receives $10 billion in funding every decade.

“Hospital infection rates are down, preventable readmissions are down and early elected delivery has significantly lowered,” Sebelius said. “Early results are incredibly promising on the delivery system side, and it will lend itself to changes in the future.”

Several emerging trends in health care that the ACA addresses include electronic health records, accessible public health data, renewed drug development trials and improving global health capacities, she said.

“There is now a real move toward data-driven decision-making in health care that really hasn’t been in place before,” she said. “In 2008, only 20 percent of doctors and 10 percent of hospitals in the country were using any form of electronic health records, and most information was done on paper.”

The Recovery Act has set up a national protocol to use electronic health records, and now the majority of doctors and hospitals are using health records, Sebelius said.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had huge amounts of data that were locked, but the Obama administration was committed to making the information understandable and accessible to the public, Sebelius said. Health care costs, infection rates and information about medical procedures are data to which consumers now have access online, she added.

Trends in clinical trials have also been gradually emerging, she noted. There are currently about 80 Food and Drug Administration breakthrough drugs going through trials and testing, and a framework has been put together for a clinical database, she said, adding that patients can voluntarily join the database so that investigators can go to it to find subjects for clinical trials, dramatically reducing the cost of drug investigation.

She concluded by saying it was necessary to more fully address global health issues.

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“Outbreak anywhere is a risk everywhere,” Sebelius said, adding that helping to build the capacity for epidemiologists to be able to address sudden outbreaks is important to the health of the United States.

A group of College Republicans, wearing “healthcare.gov” shirts, asked about the ACA during the question and answer session following the lecture. All of Sebelius’s replies were accompanied by loud applause from the audience.

Evan Draim ’16, president of the College Republicans at the University, stood to ask Sebelius why she had previously claimed that everyone who liked their health care plan could keep the plan when he said many people would be losing their health care plans because of the ACA even though they were satisfied with it.

Draim is a former contributor to The Daily Princetonian.

Sebelius replied that her intention was not to deceive the American public but she believed that the current plans under the ACA were more comprehensive for the general American public.

Draim said after the lecture that he was not satisfied with Sebelius’s answer, explaining he didn't believe it was right for her to qualify her claim from the past by offering exceptions to when people cannot keep their desired health care plans.

“We still appreciate her for coming to talk to us, and we respect the fact that we were able to engage in meaningful dialogue with her,” Draim said.

The lecture took place at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday in Dodds Auditorium.