In general, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) attempts a nifty set of tricks: it aims to add over 30 million currently uncovered Americans to insurance rolls while slowing the rate of growth of health care costs, then ultimately reduce the costs of care. This simultaneously makes insurance providers huge winners and slight losers (30 million new customers but less profit per customer), as well as hospitals, physicians and pharmaceutical companies, who are meant to make a little more money while working a lot harder for it. The basic premise is there’s already plenty of money in the system (America spends over 17% of the gross domestic product – over $2 trillion annually on health care; no other country spends more than about 11% of GDP on health care) to provide what we need.
The ACA was truly a Republican initiative at birth, for those keeping score. It was born out of the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think-tank) and is more or less a combination of plans proposed by Bob Dole and executed by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. It does not provide universal coverage or even “Medicare for all” (those would have been current Democratic ideas, although Richard Nixon proposed the same) or allow a governmental takeover of hospitals, insurance companies or physician practices (those would be socialized medicine). At it’s simplest, it’s a capitalist give to insurance companies of 30 million new patients with enhanced governmental oversight.
Here’s those 7 positive facts:
1) The 80/20 rule: The law requires insurers to spend at least 80% of premiums on direct medical care. This nearly doubles historical trends. This is meant to expand care greatly in certain areas such as prevention and mental health. If and when this doesn’t happen, you’ll get a rebate check.
2) Preventative care is being emphasized: you likely won’t have to pay a co-payment, co-insurance or deductible to receive services such as screenings, vaccinations and counseling.
3) Preexisting conditions: Health plans can’t limit or deny benefits or coverage to anyone under age 19 because of the existence of pre-existing conditions. These protections will be extended to all ages beginning in 2014.
4) Choice and ER access: You choose your own doctor. You don’t need a referral from your primary care doctor to see an Ob-Gyn doctor. You don’t need pre-approval to seek ER services outside of your plan’s network (e.g. when you’re out of town). This means those ridiculous out of network charges should go away.
5) Young Adult Coverage: If your plan covers children, you can add or keep your kids on your policy until they turn 26, even if they’re married, don’t live with you or are otherwise eligible to have their own plan.
6) Consumer Assistance Program: This strengthens your ability to appeal and fight decisions made by your insurance provider and guarantees your right to appeal denials of payment.
7) End on Annual and Lifetime Limits on Coverage for all new health insurance plans by 2014.
The bottom line is 30 million American are being formally brought under the umbrella of the health care instead of relying on emergency departments or going without care. Despite not being a perfect solution, if we were to list societal priorities, closing this gap to this extent is high enough on the list that the downstream consequences are less important as considerations. As a public health initiative, this act will accomplish many things, including putting in motion changes in health care disparities due to the lack of access to care. I would challenge all the critics of the ACA to answer one question whenever they have an argument about why they continue to oppose implementation of the ACA: “Is your concern worth leaving 30 million Americans without structured healthcare?”
I welcome your comments and questions.
Copyright © 2013 · Sterling Initiatives, LLC · Powered by WordPress
Tag Archives: Barack Obama
Straight No Chaser: Top Seven Facts You Should Know About the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)
Straight, No Chaser: A Dream of Equal Access to Health Care
This weekend marked the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the famous March on Washington. During this weekend’s remembrances, I couldn’t help but reflect back on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s most famous comments on health care in America.
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhuman.”
Why would he say such a thing? Injustice in health care has taken many forms and resulted in predictably poor outcomes for those affected. I will be frequently reviewing these considerations and addressing health care disparities in this blog. Today, I will address the inequity in insurance coverage that formed the premise for the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2009-2010, 41% of low-income adults were uninsured, and 45% of poor adults were uninsured. Contrast this with the fact that only 6% of those who make four or more times the poverty rate were uninsured. This pretty clearly makes the case that health care is a desirable asset for Americans who can afford it, and a choice that too often can’t be afforded for others. Now consider that 14% percent of white Americans were uninsured, while 22% of African-Americans were uninsured, and 32% of Hispanic Americans were uninsured. Whether you believe this is just a correlation, coincidence or reflection of something more damning, it is a situation that screaming to be addressed and improved.
Even more recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a survey showing that more than 45 million U.S. residents didn’t have health insurance during the first nine months of last year. Still even more people, 57.5 million, were uninsured for at least part of the 12 months before being polled (Be reminded that the total U.S. population is just over 311 million.).
Please take a moment and ponder the enormity of the numbers just presented. It begs the question “How can such be allowed to exist?” Dr. King’s comment begged the same question. The answer of course lies in the fact that the American health care system isn’t built on producing equality of access or outcomes. You’ve heard me say before that the American health care system remains the only system among all the major industrialized nations on earth that doesn’t ensure access for all its citizens. The American health care system is a business enterprise that has captured over $2 trillion annually, representing over 1/6 (17%) of the gross domestic product, and all the while leaving more than 45 million Americans uninsured. We are number one in money spent on health care by a large margin; in fact, the U.S. spends more on people aged over 65 than any other other country spends on its entire population. The business of medicine in America is business first. It is largely expected that good health care outcomes will result from good business in the same way that good cars, computers, smartphones, etc. are produced (theoretically). It’s important to note that according to the World Health Organization (the monitor of such things), the U.S. health care system was ranked #38 in the last WHO ranking based on standard health outcomes produced.
President Barack Obama’s health care reform law aims to extend health insurance coverage to a large portion of the uninsured. According to the Congressional Budget Office, health care reform will reduce the number of uninsured people by 27 million between 2014 and 2023. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) targets its assistance to the poor and near-poor who are least likely to have health care coverage. The ACA will provide Medicaid coverage to those with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty level ($15,282 for a single person this year) — unless their home state opts out of the Medicaid expansion. People who earn between the poverty level and four times that amount will be eligible for tax credits for private health insurance.
Access to health care is the beginning of the process by which health care disparities can be erased. As long as failure to have equal access exists to the extent that it does, the types of disparities in life expectancy, disease rates and disease survival will remain predictably dismal for certain populations. This afternoon I will revisit the Affordable Care Act and it’s efforts to improve the current system. I welcome any questions or comments.
Copyright © 2013 · Sterling Initiatives, LLC · Powered by WordPress
This weekend marked the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the famous March on Washington. During this weekend’s remembrances, I couldn’t help but reflect back on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s most famous comments on health care in America.
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhuman.”
Why would he say such a thing? Injustice in health care has taken many forms and resulted in predictably poor outcomes for those affected. I will be frequently reviewing these considerations and addressing health care disparities in this blog. Today, I will address the inequity in insurance coverage that formed the premise for the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2009-2010, 41% of low-income adults were uninsured, and 45% of poor adults were uninsured. Contrast this with the fact that only 6% of those who make four or more times the poverty rate were uninsured. This pretty clearly makes the case that health care is a desirable asset for Americans who can afford it, and a choice that too often can’t be afforded for others. Now consider that 14% percent of white Americans were uninsured, while 22% of African-Americans were uninsured, and 32% of Hispanic Americans were uninsured. Whether you believe this is just a correlation, coincidence or reflection of something more damning, it is a situation that screaming to be addressed and improved.
Even more recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a survey showing that more than 45 million U.S. residents didn’t have health insurance during the first nine months of last year. Still even more people, 57.5 million, were uninsured for at least part of the 12 months before being polled (Be reminded that the total U.S. population is just over 311 million.).
Please take a moment and ponder the enormity of the numbers just presented. It begs the question “How can such be allowed to exist?” Dr. King’s comment begged the same question. The answer of course lies in the fact that the American health care system isn’t built on producing equality of access or outcomes. You’ve heard me say before that the American health care system remains the only system among all the major industrialized nations on earth that doesn’t ensure access for all its citizens. The American health care system is a business enterprise that has captured over $2 trillion annually, representing over 1/6 (17%) of the gross domestic product, and all the while leaving more than 45 million Americans uninsured. We are number one in money spent on health care by a large margin; in fact, the U.S. spends more on people aged over 65 than any other other country spends on its entire population. The business of medicine in America is business first. It is largely expected that good health care outcomes will result from good business in the same way that good cars, computers, smartphones, etc. are produced (theoretically). It’s important to note that according to the World Health Organization (the monitor of such things), the U.S. health care system was ranked #38 in the last WHO ranking based on standard health outcomes produced.
President Barack Obama’s health care reform law aims to extend health insurance coverage to a large portion of the uninsured. According to the Congressional Budget Office, health care reform will reduce the number of uninsured people by 27 million between 2014 and 2023. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) targets its assistance to the poor and near-poor who are least likely to have health care coverage. The ACA will provide Medicaid coverage to those with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty level ($15,282 for a single person this year) — unless their home state opts out of the Medicaid expansion. People who earn between the poverty level and four times that amount will be eligible for tax credits for private health insurance.
Access to health care is the beginning of the process by which health care disparities can be erased. As long as failure to have equal access exists to the extent that it does, the types of disparities in life expectancy, disease rates and disease survival will remain predictably dismal for certain populations. This afternoon I will revisit the Affordable Care Act and it’s efforts to improve the current system. I welcome any questions or comments.
Copyright © 2013 · Sterling Initiatives, LLC · Powered by WordPress
