Barriers to change in engineering the system of health care delivery

Abstract

Significant reform of the health care system sufficient to achieve universal coverage, a value-driven system and administrative simplification faces enormous barriers at the level of our societal ecosystem – barriers as large as any that can be faced in public policy. These barriers exist within the health system itself as a complex adaptive system, and are structured by our economic, legal, cultural and political systems. Because there are so many barriers, significant reform is a relatively rare occurrence. Yet it does happen and there are some important examples of major health care reforms.

There are a number of lessons to be learned from the successful enactment of the Medicare and Medicaid programs that appear relevant to current and future reform efforts. First, a necessary condition for achieving significant reform is the existence of large and sufficiently enduring social forces sufficient to disrupt legislative and policy stasis and drive the necessary political solutions. Second, public sentiment and electoral “mandates” might be necessary to significant reform, but they are not sufficient. Third, assuming the theoretical capacity to manage the constellation of systemic, economic, legal, cultural and legislative barriers, there remains a political “tipping point” that must be crossed and translated into a Congressional super-majority in order to enact significant nationwide reform.