Health Care Legislation and the CHT
By: Jessica Grogan
Wednesday, July 28 2010
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich sat down with MD News at the American Hospital Association Health Forum Leadership Summit in San Diego, CA, to discuss the complexities of the health care legislation and the diagrams his organization — the Center for Health Transformation — created to demonstrate how the law will affect health care.
Photo: Michelle Stein
The Center for Health Transformation (CHT) recently unveiled two charts to help explain the Affordable Care Act to the public and medical community.
In May, the CHT released a 3-by-5 foot chart titled “Diagram of Health Law,” which illustrates how the new act will create 159 programs and agencies of the federal government to carry out tasks outlined in the health care law. Among the new programs illustrated in the chart: the Indian Health Service Mental Health Technician Training Program; the Medicare Shared Savings Program; the Public Health Workforce Loan Repayment Program; and the Advisory Board on Elder Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation.
The CHT developed this diagram to demonstrate the belief that the Affordable Care Act will focus more on expanding the government and less on improving the health of all Americans.
The second chart from the CHT was released in June and serves as a timeline for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The 5-by-10 foot timeline illustrates a multitude of deadlines and processes that will impact everyone in the medical community. The timeline will also inform the public when each of the 159 newly created offices, agencies and programs are expected to provide or change services under the new health care law. The CHT believes these two charts will reveal how complicated the Affordable Care Act is.
When speaking of the act, Speaker Gingrich says, “My hunch is, this bill will be repealed by March or April of 2013 because people will just decide that it’s hopeless. When you look at these two charts, you know there’s no possible way the federal bureaucracy can run this.”
The CHT plans to release additional charts and diagrams over the next few months to further inform the public about the Affordable Care Act.
Watch exclusive video of Speaker Gingrich talking about this topic.
For more information, visit the Center for Health Transformation website. To download PDFs of the CHT charts, connect to the Diagram of Health Law and the Healthcare Law Timeline Chart.
About the Center for Health Transformation
The Center for Health Transformation is a high-impact collaboration of private and public sector leaders committed to creating a 21st Century Intelligent Health System that saves lives and saves money for all Americans. CHT is based on the following premise: Small changes or reactionary fixes to separate pieces of the current system have not and will not work. We need a system-wide transformation. Unlike other alliances, CHT unites stakeholders across the spectrum (providers, employers, vendors, trade associations, disease groups, and think tanks) and government leaders at both the state and federal level to drive transformation according to a shared vision and key principles.
