Another Piece of Obamacare That Trump Should Keep

To get a sense of the future of American health care, amidst the post-election uncertainty, watch what happens to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. This agency, created as part of the Affordable Care Act, has attracted substantial opposition. A recent proposal to change reimbursement to doctors for administering certain drugs, in particular, has led to calls that it be abolished. But let's hope the center survives, because it could prove crucial to any new effort to raise the value of health care in the U.S.

Republicans and Democrats agree that our health-care system needs to move away from fee-for-service payments, which give doctors an incentive to provide more care rather than better care. This payment shift can be accomplished either by encouraging private insurance companies to change how they reimburse hospitals and doctors, or by directly changing how Medicare -- the largest single purchaser of health-care services -- pays those providers. Republicans have tended to favor the former approach and Democrats the latter, but both sides recognize that a combination is needed.