Former Gov. Florio, health care leaders discuss if Obamacare is working in N.J.

WEST LONG BRANCH - The Affordable Care Act was "noble and necessary," but far from a perfect solution.

That was a sentiment discussed during a panel discussion at Monmouth University on Wednesday featuring Former Gov. Jim Florio, N.J. Association of Health Plans President Wardell Sanders, Monmouth Medical Center CEO Dr. Frank Vozos and Meridian Health CEO John Lloyd.

The quartet discussed the challenges that the Affordable Care Act faced and created during its first year in New Jersey, as well as how more significant changes are expected, and needed, to the state's health care model in the next several years.

Patrick Murray, the director of Monmouth University's Polling Institute, kicked off the event by telling the audience that the institute's most recent poll on the Affordable Care Act, which was conducted in the Fall, showed that New Jersey residents were divided on their opinions on the ACA - 45 favorable to 46 unfavorable.

Sanders said the ACA was "noble and necessary" in the attempt to provide coverage to more of the population, but that it has not solved some of the major problems facing the nation's health care structure, including the high costs for coverage and pharmaceuticals.

"The greatest challenge before and the greatest continuing challenge, even after the Affordable Care Act, is cost," Sanders said. "There are still folks who can't afford coverage, folks who can't afford their deductibles and copays, and the last great barrier is the one we'll continue banging our head against, which is affordability."

Lloyd compared the current state of health care to the Wild West, in which organizations, including Meridian, are dealing with "huge swings" in finances due to governmental deductions, penalties and reimbursements, as well as the continuing problems of dealing with a large number of uninsured patients, bad debt, and limited governmental reimbursement through Medicare and Medicaid.

"We still have a very fragmented system when it comes to reimbursement," Lloyd said. "Right now you have so many pluses and minus that it is a very, very tough environment to manage through."

This environment has been a game changer from an administrative and organizational perspective for health care providers, Vozos said.

"You're seeing changes occur in almost every sector of healthcare. Today, more than ever, physicians want to be employed by the hospitals because it's a very uncertain world if you want to go out there in private practice. Those old-fashioned, much-loved single or two-doctor practices, they can't survive anymore in this environment," Vozos said. "The whole game is changing right now and it's going to continue rapidly changing over the next four or five years, where I think five years from now it's not going to look anything like the health care we're doing today."

This shift has also resulted in a decrease in the amount of standalone hospitals in New Jersey.

However, Florio warned that there is a "need to be cautious" about the consolidations that are taking place.

"We obviously want to have collaboration as much as possible and cooperation as much as possible," Florio said. "But now with hospitals merging and with insurance companies merging, and in add addition to horizontal integration, we're having hospitals acquire insurance companies and insurance companies acquire hospitals. In the marketplace system it can reach diminishing returns at some point, where you don't have competitive forces which have really been relied upon."

The 77-year-old former governor said some of the steps his administration took to help control the rising costs of health care in New Jersey resemble parts of the Affordable Care Act.

"There was much more to do, we could've done more. We tried to have a health care plan for the state so everyone was not tripping all over each other and a rational allocation of resources around the state so everyone doesn't have to duplicate what everyone else is doing," Florio said. "There are things that we did early on that we're now catching up with, but the problems are still the same: access, quality and affordability. The problems then, are still problems now. But we're starting to move more progressively in the area to deal with those things."

Rob Spahr may be reached at rspahr@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheRobSpahr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.