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Obamacare, You're Fired - December 2016 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

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(You Can, Too)" on p. 14]. He envisions an increase in self-pay patients if legislation is passed that increases the use of HSAs or counts money spent in direct pricing toward tax deductibles. "I'm a bit of a political skeptic, so I don't see any big changes com- ing," says Mr. Poole. "But even if we keep going down the current path, the prohibitive costs of both the exchange plans and the compa- ny plans will push people to explore self-funding on an individual or company level." Will meaningful use be meaningful? The Obama administration has worked off the "if you build it they will come" belief that propping up reform programs with federal dollars will make them work, says Mr. Strazzella. How will Mr. Trump's philo- sophical shift to free market reform impact governmental backing of programs such as Meaningful Use, the ACA-funded program that pro- vides financial incentives to hospitals that implement electronic health records to reduce paperwork and administrative burdens, cut costs and reduce medical errors? "Hospitals might have to decide if the tech- nology is worth having solely on the basis it makes them better providers," says Mr. Strazzella. Ms. Madhani says it's widely accepted among healthcare providers that electronic record intraoperability is necessary to run an effective health system. "There's been a lot of criticism about how the technol- ogy is being implemented, and that's something the new administra- tion will address," she says. "Everything's on the table, but I don't think the financial incentive for EHR use is going away." Medicare and Medicaid? More questions and uncertainty surround what Mr. Trump and Republican leaders plan to do with the nation's universal healthcare 4 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 6

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