The Affordable Care Act, Meant to Increase Medical Care Accessibility, May in Practicality Hurt That Accessibility Through Narrow Networks

Natalie Gao, MJLST Staffer

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) continues to perpetuate some of the issues of medical inaccessibility it was meant to fix. The PPACA uses insurers’ desire to dodge risk to make health insurance more widely available, preventing insurers from refusing coverage based on preexisting conditions and requires they guarantee renewalability without too extensive a waiting period. Although PPACA disincentive insurance companies to risk-select, insurance companies found new ways to compete.

Narrow Networks, the Very Sick, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: Recalling the Purpose of Health Insurance and Reform by Valarie Blake discusses the creation of narrow networks by insurance companies as new ways to compete, where insurance companies agree to better rates with a narrow group of providers. This allows them to give better prices and premiums to its customers, even if the potential consequences is that the customers actually end up with more restrictive coverage. PPACA theoretically regulates networks, guaranteeing network adequacy of by a minimum standard of care and that the network be with essential community providers. But PPACA does not require network adequacy of providers. Practically, narrow networks can affect the availability of specialize services that some patients need, and the quality and experience of those providers. Even if the need to compete for patients might also ensure that narrow networks never compromise the necessary care, tertiary and specialty care, and the quality of care and connection due the provider, can easily be limited.

“Network adequacy,” states Blake, “is not a debate about access of health insurance but rather access of healthcare.” One way to measure whether or not our health care system is doing what it is supposed to is to measure the health of the very sick, and it brings up the question of whether or not PPACA guarantees all the right of healthcare or the right to be healthy. And what does count as sufficient access and who should be responsible for paying the healthcare costs associated with that sufficient access? These questions evoke analysis for consumer choice and consumer rights. The article recommends that network adequacy standard in both State and Federal law include tertiary and specialized care, and not extra cost be added onto out-of-network care, and the article recommends a special standard for tertiary care be adopted into law. On principle and based the cases that have occurred already around PPACA, narrow networks can easily become an issue that, if left unregulated, can create the very thing it was meant to solve.