Advancing Health Care Quality? From Medicare’s Passage to the 2016 Election

The 50-year journey of health care quality in America from the passage of the Medicare Law to the election of Donald Trump is now in the history books. For the most part, that journey has been a steadily positive one based on a willingness of the health care system’s component parts to learn from experience and from each other through innovation, testing, and the acceptance of evidence. The commitment to quality has been steady, bipartisan, and collaborative between the public and private sectors. It is this author’s hope that the United States will continue to vigorously pursue quality innovations; science and evidence will continue to advance and prevail in health care policy, business, and law; and we will see measurable improvements in the overall health of the U.S. population as the health care and social service sectors better coordinate their efforts. It will take the combined commitment of payers, providers, regulators, employers, and consumers, but there really is no obstacle to continued progress other than intentional obstruction for private gain or a collective failure of will.