Name: Cardinal Health’s CEO Thinks ‘Significant' Changes Are Coming to Obamacare
Uploaded: 2016-12-08
Duration: 4 min 20 s
Description: But George Barrett thinks a full repeal is unnecessary

George, Donald Trump has been talking about he wants to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. From what you know so far, do you think that he's going to dismantle ir or just make modifications? I think a pure repeal, while it is possible, I think is difficult, and may not be necessary to accomplish some of what he's talked about. I think one way or the other we were gonna see some significant modification to this law. I think even in a Clinton administration, there were gonna be things that they probably recognized, in the exchanges for example, that had to be modified. So I think we would expect pretty heavy modification to it. And the question is where, and in what priority? It seems that Trump has a businessman's view Of health care. He wants health care to operate like any other business, being you know competitive with a lot of consumer choice. I mean again, not much detail on how he was going to do that, but there has been talk of letting insures sell coverage across state lines, there's been talk of health savings accounts. Do you think these moves will really make a difference in improving the cost and access And quality of health care. I think the competitive forces today are actually improving the cost and quality of health care. Even within hospitals, you're seeing hospitals compete, and it's not just all on price. It's along now published outcomes of the work that they do. So I think competition actually does work and I think it improves the patient experience. People are competing on that now. I do think it improves the quality and I think the cost but it requires also companies like ours behind the scenes to be helping to make that happen. But I actually think that competitive forces do, in fact, if we let them occur, improve quality and reduce cost. But you know in every business S 1 Of the philosophy usually is put the customer first, except maybe in healthcare where doctors and hospitals and insurers seem to have all of the power. Do you see that changing and that we are entering the stage of consumerism and consumer empowerment. S 2 I do think that we are going to see a more active consumer. I think that transparency is likely to increase. And I do think that the system is becoming more patient centered and I think that's a good thing. Well, we saw that consumer anger against prices for drugs, of that whole epi pen situation, had a significant impact on how drug makers were pricing their products. Given that Cardinal Health is in the business of distributing drugs and medical devices. What does consumer empowerment mean for your business? Every business should be concerned about anger of the population in the United States. So the breakdown in trust between people and their institutions, whether it's businesses or government or church or university, that is a bad thing for us as a society. There's no question about it. For us as a health care company, I am happy with that active knowledgeable consumer. I think that as actually good for our business. So that does not concern me but in the big sense the breakdown and trust and an angry America, I think does concern me and with a lot to think about as a country. How are you preparing for this new phase that we're going into, with all the uncertainties about Healthcare. What is Cardinal doing? We actually had a strategy retreat yesterday. I was back in Columbus and we asked that question. What would we change in our strategy knowing what we know today about the election? And the answer is nothing. I think the strategy is exactly right. We are the most efficient way of getting pharmaceutical products and medical products into the hands of the providers. Safe, secure, efficient. That's never going to go away. We can provide standardization tools for a system that actually has to learn how to standardize like every other industry. We provide those today. So I actually think that the value proposition we have that we've been building resonates regardless of how this policy changes. Now again as policy becomes clear we'll probably have to make small course corrections along the way. But we've tried to build an organization that's extremely agile. I'm sure you think about healthcare 24 / 7. I mean is there a paradigm change that would really fix healthcare? I don't think there's a silver bullet that fixes healthcare. But if you make it centered around the patient you are on the right path. And I think that is at the heart of it. It is a complex. One- sixth of our economy So it's not gonna be simple. There's no silver bullet. But I do think that we're moving toward a system that is much more centered around a patient and consumers are actually acting more like consumers. I think that's a direction we're going. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

But George Barrett thinks a full repeal is unnecessary