Health Beat readers may be interested in listening to the speech that Dartmouth’s Elliott Fisher delivered at the Lundberg Institute’s inaugural event at the Commonwealth Club of California on October 25. Fisher does an excellent job of summing up where health care reform stands today, reformers’ goals, and the challenges they face. The Question & Answer session may be of particular interest. Fisher handled it beautifully. Click here: http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/elliott-s-fisher-achieving-sustainable-health-care-system-102511
Category Archives: Health Reform
There Is No “Silver Lining” in Repealing Insurance Mandate
Earlier this week, as the Supreme Court continued to mull over which of the four legal challenges to the health reform law they will choose to tackle, I found out that, in fact, there could be a “silver lining” to the repeal of the individual mandate—the requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance.
In a post on Politco, Jennifer Haberkorn writes that some “Democrats and supporters of the law” believe that if “the least popular part of the law goes away, they think what’s left could become stronger and more popular with the public.”
The Future of Health Care Reform: Health Wonk Review Raises Some Provocative Questions:
Should the Preventive Services Task Force Depend on Congress for Funding?
Should Doctors Who Share Decision-Making Be Protected Against Lawsuits?
If Doctors Don’t Tell Patients What They Are Doing, Is This Malpractice?
Should Physicians Who Want Tort Reform Give Something in Return?
Should Nurses with PhD’s be Called “Doctor”?
These are some of the questions I thought about after reading the latest edition of Health Wonk Review, hosted by Health Affairs’ Chris Fleming. In this two-part post, I focus on just five of the best health care posts of the past two weeks. Inevitably, I have omitted some outstanding posts. I urge you to read the full round-up here.
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“Essential Benefits” that Insurers Must Offer Under Health Care Reform
Will Universal Coverage Mean “Medicaid for All”?
Often, I refer to the health care reform bill that President Obama signed into law in March of 2010 as “the Affordable Care Act” or ACA. Friday, as I read the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) report on the “Essential Health Benefits” (EHB) that private insurers will be required to cover under reform, I resolved never to make that mistake again.
Medical Industrial Complex Announces $3 Million Campaign to Maim Health Care Reform
A new group that calls itself “Partnership for America” has announced that it will be spending $3 mllion on a campaign to “freeze, investigate and replace’” the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The “Partnership” didn’t come up with this idea on its own. It is backing a bill introduced by Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) that would freeze implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act until its full impact can be investigated. Johnson introduced the “Freeze and Investigate Affordable Care Act” (H.R. 3095) on Wednesday. If enacted, the Act would immediately suspend implementation of President Obama’s health care law and require Congress and the President to appoint aAffordable Care Evaluation Commission to study the measure’s impact on patient care, the economy and private-sector job creation.
Health Care Reform: The Next Stage, Part 1
Free Market Competition Cannot Make Heath Care Efficient: Why Health Care Should Be Regulated, Not By Government, but By Science
Not a few politicians and pundits continue to believe that free market competition offers the best solution to creating a health care system that offers good value for our health care dollars. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, for one, argues that if we just give every American a tax credit, and let each person shop for his or her own insurance, consumers would pick the insurance network that offered the best care at the lowest price.
The Affordable Care Act: Laying Out the Details in One Place
An Itemized List of Savings and Revenues
Today, over at The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner makes an important point: “in 2010 Republicans convinced a lot of seniors that the Affordable Care Act would come at the expense of Medicare. In truth, you can demonstrate that the ACA will actually save costs without cutting care,” he adds. But to do that, “you have to get so far down in the weeds of health policy that you lose most voters.”
Kuttner is right: the truth lies in the details, and this makes it difficult to explain the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to the public. If Congress had chosen to pay for health care reform by slashing doctors’ fees by 20 percent, and capping how much Medicare will spend on anyone over the age of 75, it would be far easier to sum up the ACA in a few pithy paragraphs.
Instead, legislators focused on trimming $19 billion here, saving $145 billion there, and another $20 billion over there, by; closing tax loopholes, phasing out overpayments to those private sector Advantage insurers that are not delivering good value for Medicare dollars, and eliminating redundancies within Medicare. These are just a few of the ways that the legislation squeezes some of the waste out of Medicare spending without cutting benefits, or reducing reimbursements to doctors. In addition, reform legislation raises new revenues, including $107 billion in new fees that insurers, drug makers, and medical device companies have agreed to pay. (They can afford to contribute to reform because they know the legislation will bring them millions of new customers.)
I have written a few posts that delve into the details of how “The Affordable Care Act Pays for Itself and Cuts the Deficit.” And now I have put all the numbers together in an issue brief titled “Better Care for Less.”
Granted, it takes more than a few pages to lay everything out, itemizing and explaining both savings and new revenues. This is why you won’t find a detailed breakdown of the ACA in the newspaper, or even on the blogosphere. Most bloggers believe that they must be brief. I should add that I admire tight one-page overviews of reform legislation, but I also think there is a place for clear in-depth analysis of the most important piece of legislation this nation has seen in more than 45 years.
You may not want to sit down and read “Better Care For Less” in one sitting, but I hope you’ll find it a useful resource that will answer many of your questions about the ACA. It may also help you explain reform legislation to skeptical friends. You can click here to download the brief from The Century Foundation’s website.