Tag Archives: Affordable Care Act

Medical Industrial Complex Announces $3 Million Campaign to Maim Health Care Reform

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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.

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Health Care Reform: The Next Stage, Part 1

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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.

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Medicare Advantage Grows; But Not Without Government Help

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When the health reform bill was passed in 2009, it looked like the end of the gravy chain for Medicare Advantage plans; the privately-run health care plans that are sold to seniors as an alternative to traditional, government fee-for-service Medicare. The Affordable Care Act cuts $136 billion over 10 years from Medicare Advantage, following years of concern over the fact that the plans cost the government about 14% more (about $12 billion a year) than traditional Medicare. These overpayments allowed MA plans to offer perks like vision, dental and prescription benefits as well as lower out-of-pocket costs for some subscribers. Now about one-quarter of all seniors are covered under these plans.

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The Affordable Care Act: Laying Out the Details in One Place

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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.