The Partnership to Improve Patient Care (PIPC) has issued the following statement calling on the Trump administration to avoid policies that discriminate against patients and people with disabilities.
Since its founding, the Partnership to Improve Patient Care (PIPC) has been at the forefront of the fight to put patients first in our nation’s healthcare system and ensure individual patients with different health care needs – including people with disabilities and older adults – are not ignored and devalued. In this fight, we have always opposed use of cost effectiveness measures and standards that deem certain populations as unworthy of treatment in government programs. As Congress and the administration seek policies to improve patient care and health care affordability, we urge all policymakers to again reject any policy that relies on quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) or similar measures. Instead, PIPC supports approaches that ensure patients, people with disabilities and older adults are valued in the U.S. health care system – a key differentiator between our country and countries that openly embrace utilitarian models of health care and care rationing, dictating the care provided based on its cost effectiveness and the value placed on those receiving care in those countries.
We were pleased that the first administration under President Trump enforced disability nondiscrimination laws against the implementation of Crisis Standards of Care in several states that would have explicitly put people with disabilities and older adults at the back of the line for care in a shortage, openly recognizing that every American is worth treating regardless of age or disability. In the last Congress, every House Republican voted to ban the use of QALYs in a bill advanced by the Energy and Commerce Committee and lauded by disability and patient advocates across the country.
We have begun to see increasing use of QALYs and similar measures that devalue people with disabilities and older adults as the basis for reimbursement and coverage decisions that impact access to care and undermine clinicians. This is inconsistent with efforts of the President’s first administration and existing federal laws specifically enacted to protect the most vulnerable patients.
We look forward to working with the Congress and administration on policies that build on the President’s first term efforts to assure every person is valued in America’s health system, starting with a commitment to ban the use of discriminatory value assessments across federal programs. We look forward to working together to put America’s patients and providers in charge of healthcare.
We were pleased that the first administration under President Trump enforced disability nondiscrimination laws against the implementation of Crisis Standards of Care in several states that would have explicitly put people with disabilities and older adults at the back of the line for care in a shortage, openly recognizing that every American is worth treating regardless of age or disability. In the last Congress, every House Republican voted to ban the use of QALYs in a bill advanced by the Energy and Commerce Committee and lauded by disability and patient advocates across the country.
We have begun to see increasing use of QALYs and similar measures that devalue people with disabilities and older adults as the basis for reimbursement and coverage decisions that impact access to care and undermine clinicians. This is inconsistent with efforts of the President’s first administration and existing federal laws specifically enacted to protect the most vulnerable patients.
We look forward to working with the Congress and administration on policies that build on the President’s first term efforts to assure every person is valued in America’s health system, starting with a commitment to ban the use of discriminatory value assessments across federal programs. We look forward to working together to put America’s patients and providers in charge of healthcare.
