Seize the ACA: The Innovator’s Guide to the Affordable Care Act – by Ben Wanamaker and Devin Bean

Throughout history, disruptive innovations have repeatedly, and often predictably, transformed entire industries through the introduction of affordable and accessible products and services. Personal computers, automobiles, mobile phones, airplanes, and email are disruptive innovations that have permanently changed the world around us by making previously expensive and complicated products increasingly available to larger groups of people. Today, with health care costs spiraling ever higher, the U.S. is in a health care crisis—and in dire need of disruptive innovations that could make quality care more affordable and accessible.

In 2010, the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) dramatically altered the U.S. health care industry. It remains one of the most controversial pieces of legislation passed in decades. In October 2013, significant provisions of the act will be implemented and the health care ecosystem will once again shift to accommodate new regulation and infrastructure.

A complicated policy with over 955 pages and countless congressional revisions, it is naïve to claim that the ACA is a wholly good or bad policy. With such complexity and nuance, sweeping statements of political or economic ideology do little to address the reality at hand. Provisions of the law are now being implemented, and it is essential that policymakers, medical practitioners, and innovators alike consider where opportunities for disruptive innovation reside. It is also essential to consider which provisions of the law might inhibit disruptive innovation and focus reform efforts on those provisions.