The Affordable Care Act (ACA), passed in 2010, was enacted to make healthcare affordable, accessible, and high quality. But it also stirred up intense controversy and headlines as Americans wrestled with mandates for individual insurance, new taxes on high value or “Cadillac” plans, and the Government faced implementation challenges due to the complexity of an enormous law.
From the beginning, all eyes were on the White House and federal agencies charged with rolling out the new program. Hundreds of Booz Allen experts—working with multiple government agencies—deployed to meet the mission.
Although the ACA is widely credited with ushering in U.S. health reform, health reform actually started at the very beginning of the Obama administration. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and its Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) provisions passed in 2009 laid the foundation for the “pay for value” movement that underlies the payment reform provisions of the ACA. And reform continues with the passage of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015. Combined, these laws regulations meant changes for many agencies that Booz Allen supports, including:
- The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
- The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
- The Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
- The Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
“Booz Allen’s work is helping to change and shape the future of healthcare in our country,” says Executive Vice President Kristine Martin Anderson, who leads the firm’s civil health business. “The expertise and skill our people bring is key to our position as an essential partner and market integrator for health care reform across our civil clients.”
Let’s take a look at highlights from a few of our engagements.
