The following post originally appeared on the null.com blog.
Today, the Supreme Court begins to hear three days of oral arguments on the legal challenge to President Barack Obama’s health care reform legislation brought by 26 states and one business organization (The National Federation of Independent Business). The case raises three issues:
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
After writing about “Essential Health Benefits” for HealthBeat, I wrote a shorter post for Time.com (the online version of Time magazine), updating what I had written here.
This month, the public will have a chance to weigh in how they think “essential” should be defined. See below for a link to places, times, and dates where “listening sessions” will be held in cities across the nation, as well as information on how to register. Time is of the essence. Insurers are calling for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to spell out the essential benefits that must be included in all policies sold to individuals and small employers by the end of December.
This Time.com post appeared Tuesday. Below, the first half of the post (You can read the full piece on Time.com’s “Moneyland”)
At the end of the excerpt below, I comment on how both tax credits and the state-based Purchasing Exchanges will make insurance more affordable for small employers and individuals who are buying their own policies.
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.”
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.
Continue reading
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.
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.
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.