Top Things to Know: Advancing Healthcare Reform: The AHA's 2020 Statement of Principles for Adequate, Accessible, and Affordable Health Care
Published: February 03, 2020
- To achieve the American Heart Association’s mission to be a relentless force for longer, healthier lives, and in support of our 2030 goal to equitably increase life expectancy around the globe, we must work to improve health care for all in this country.
- The AHA has a long history of leading efforts to improve access to quality health care, issuing health care principles in 1993 and in 2008.
- Our 2020 principles build on our previous work and describe the foundational changes needed to achieve health care that is adequate, accessible, and affordable for everyone living in the United States. The principles are placed in the context of the evolving health care landscape with awareness that efforts to prevent cardiovascular disease can have synergistic benefits in preventing other diseases and improving overall well-being.
- The updated principles focus on equitably expanding access to affordable health care and coverage; enhancing the availability of evidence-based preventive services; eliminating disparities that limit the availability and equitable delivery of health care; strengthening the public health infrastructure to respond to social determinants of health; prioritizing and accelerating investments in biomedical research; and growing a diverse, culturally competent workforce prepared to meet the challenges of delivering high-value health care.
- For decades, healthcare reform has been front and center in the public dialogue, driven in large part by concerns about access, cost, quality, and the economic burden placed on patients, employers, and payers– especially in comparison to other developed countries.
- Despite access gains following the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the current approach to U.S. health care delivery fails many, with 30 million Americans remaining uninsured and 44 million Americans being underinsured. Moreover, rising health care costs remain a concern for individuals and families as well as employers and the government.
- Among Americans at risk for cardiovascular disease, those who are uninsured or underinsured have worse health outcomes, including higher mortality rates and poorer blood pressure control, than those with quality coverage.
- Improvements in health care quality and outcomes have not been experienced equitably across populations and overall progress made over the last 5 decades in reducing cardiovascular mortality and disability has stalled. One’s chances of surviving cardiovascular disease vary greatly by sex, gender identity, race and ethnicity - factors influenced by where people live, their levels of income and education, and other social determinants of health.
- Our understanding of the factors that must be addressed to truly bring quality health care within reach for everyone living in the United States must also be accompanied by a bipartisan ownership of the existing issues and commitment to a unified way forward, including meaningful, equitable health reforms.
- These principles will serve as a benchmark to evaluate AHA’s positions on existing and future health care proposals put forward by Presidential Administrations, Members of Congress, and bipartisan groups and coalitions.
Citation
Warner JJ, Benjamin IJ, Churchwell K, Firestone G, Gardner TJ, Harrington RA, Johnson JC, Ng-Osorio J, Rodriguez CJ, Todman L, Yaffe K, Yancy CW; on behalf of the American Heart Association Advocacy Coordinating Committee. Advancing healthcare reform: the American Heart Association’s 2020 statement of principles for adequate, accessible, and affordable health care: a presidential advisory from the American Heart Association [published online ahead of print February 3, 2020]. Circulation. doi: 10.1161/CIR.0000000000000759.