People are saying that President Barack Obama’s re-election is a victory for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a, “Obamacare.” And I’m not really surprised by this. Americans feel that expanding access to health care and aiming for the goal of universal coverage are the right things to do.
And having health insurance, as 30 million more people are expected to under the health care reform, improves health outcomes. A recent study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that patients admitted to hospitals for heart attacks and strokes had significantly better survival rates if they had health insurance.
Having everybody—or close to everybody—in the system also makes intuitive sense: spreading the risk across more (and younger) people should help stabilize that risk.
But while getting more people insured seems like an unambiguous good, it presents some issues. Our health care system is dysfunctional and costs are out of control. Obamacare essentially opens the floodgates to this dysfunctional system without addressing cost, thereby giving access to more people who expect the quality of care to remain the same—or even improve.
We have to have a plan to address cost. It’s simply not enough to vote for Patient Protection. Now we must demand Affordable Care.
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
← A Vote for Obamacare?Dr. Watson vs. Dr. Welby → Conventional Wisdom vs. Good Health Care Posted on December 3, 2012 by Dave Oliker It seems obvious that we should base our health care policy on scientific evidence. But one difficulty that comes with health care policy is that the evidence doesn’t always correspond with conventional wisdom.
Conventional wisdom says regular doctor checkups keep people healthy and save lives. But a recent international study says, no they don’t. Conducted by a well-respected global non-profit organization, the Cochrane Collaboration, this study examined 16 randomized trials comparing health checks with no health checks in adults unselected for disease or risk factors. The researchers went looking specifically for the effect on morbidity and mortality (i.e., illness and death), and they concluded that “general health checks are unlikely to be beneficial.”
This, of course, is a broad conclusion—it’s a statement that applies to entire populations of patients. But how do we apply it to individuals?
That’s another difficulty that comes with health care policy: what’s true of patients in general is not necessarily true of the specific patient in the paper gown. A patient could be sitting there with undiagnosed high blood pressure or blood sugar levels tipping toward diabetes. A patient could feel fine, but comes in for his or her annual checkup just to be sure.
Across the general population as a whole, health checks make no statistical difference in the incidence of disease and death. (I would venture this is partly because health checks do prevent illness, but they also identify illness, meaning more is reported.) But this patient’s health check could result in a lifestyle correction that could ultimately be life-changing, if not life-saving.
How do we make sure a patient gets the attention and treatment he or she needs (but doesn’t realize he or she needs) while making sure not to over-treat the vast majority of the population? Is it safe to wait until the patient shows symptoms? Are there basic checks we could do without heading to the doctor’s office?
Getting the scientific evidence is just the first step in making health care policy. Turns out it might even be the easy part.
I STRONGLY suggest that everyone read this link above in it's entirety!!!!
It is mind blowing!!!!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
A Look At The Looming Doctor Crisis Posted on November 5, 2012 by Dave Oliker Regardless of what the Affordable Care Act means, one thing is certain—it is going to mean more patients in the health care system. John Goodman writes in The Wall Street Journal that in the ten years following 2014 (when the bulk of the ACA is implemented), an additional 30 million people are expected to have health coverage. That’s good news: getting more people insured is a good thing and one of the main objectives of the law.
But it is not without consequences. Let’s think about this. There are going to be more patients. And thanks to the ACA, those patients are going to have a lot of services available to them for “free:” the law requires new health plans to cover preventive services without additional cost sharing. That will be an incentive for more people to use such services.
But who is going to provide those services? It’s not as if doctors today are sitting around surfing the web and hoping another patient will walk through the door. Have you tried to make a non-emergency appointment lately? Doctors—especially primary care doctors—are already fully booked. Goodman cites a 2003 study that finds it would take doctors 7.4 hours a day to follow, for each patient, every recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. “To meet the promise of free preventive care nationwide,” Goodman concludes, “every family doctor in America would have to work full-time delivering it, leaving no time for all the other things they need to do.”
One of those things is paperwork: another Wall Street Journal piece argues that the ACA piles on even more of that. For example, it points to the Physician Quality Reporting System, which requires doctors to report medical data to the CMS in order to qualify for Medicare incentive payments (which presumably will help keep these doctors from chucking Medicare patients in favor of better-paying private ones). The specific complaint here is a bit overdrawn—doctors have to keep records, regardless—but I think the underlying point is valid: to accomplish many of its goals, the ACA asks doctors to do more and more, for more and more people.
There’s already a doctor shortage. The HHS reported that as of October 11, 2012, the U.S. has 15,300 fewer primary care doctors than we need. When the ACA is fully implemented, it can only get worse, until we find ways to encourage more people to enter the field. Meanwhile, doctors will have to find ways to use their time more efficiently. Physician and writer Atul Gawande has explored the idea of an assembly-line approach, with centralized control and standardized treatment protocols. He calls it “Big Medicine” but it’s a big change—for the system and for the medical culture. You’ve got to wonder: would doctors be able to adjust?
Gov Almighty wants the un-insured in the system so they can prescribe mind altering drugs for them too.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Cuccinelli says most new jobs have been part-time since Obamacare became law
Quoted Text
Cuccinelli says that since President Barack Obama signed the health care law, most of the new jobs created in the country have been part time. He’s flat out wrong. BLS figures show that since the signing in March 2010, there are 5 million more full-time workers and 500,000 more part-time employees.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
"Virtually every person across this country has seen premiums going up and up and up" due to Obamacare." Ted Cruz
Quoted Text
Cruz said Obamacare has led to premiums going up and up and up for virtually every person. Cruz was most inaccurate when he spoke sweepingly about most Americans. The fact is, the majority of Americans already have insurance and Obamacare has had little impact on their premiums. Cruz is using inflated rhetoric. We rate his claim False.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
apparently you didn't read the law...the insurance companies and the payroll companies have the regulations listed....
do you think that people will all walk out of their jobs if they offered part time positions...because you can't collect unemployment if the company offers you gainful employment.....
if we had wanted to do anything about health insurance before we would have all kept on working and opted out of healthcare... now the government will penalize us if we 'union' together to protest health insurance....
BRIIIIIILLLLLLLIANT!!!!!!
NO WONDER THE UNIONS WANTED AN OPT OUT.....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
"Virtually every person across this country has seen premiums going up and up and up" due to Obamacare." Ted Cruz
Quoted Text Cruz said Obamacare has led to premiums going up and up and up for virtually every person. Cruz was most inaccurate when he spoke sweepingly about most Americans. The fact is, the majority of Americans already have insurance and Obamacare has had little impact on their premiums. Cruz is using inflated rhetoric. We rate his claim False.
It did go up, it didn't go down by $2500 per year as sold by Obama. So yes, Obamacare did not have the promised impact on Americans insurance premiums - they went UP. Cruz rhetoric is actually 100% correct.
The funniest thing is, the article admits the majority of Americans had health insurance. Now the minority that didn't purchase the insurance companies product are forced to. That's a pretty good deal for the corporate insurance companies.
"'In less than three weeks since the launch of NY State of Health, already nearly 150,000 New Yorkers have signed up for quality, low-cost health insurance,' said Donna Frescatore, executive director of the state online marketplace, in an emailed statement. Thousands of New Yorkers have not only registered, but actually enrolled in and purchased insurance coverage through the NY State of Health website, according to the state Health Department
Albany Times Union
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Donna Frescatore, director of the New York State of Health marketplace, said Friday that 134,000 people had registered and shopped on the state’s online health care site since its Oct. 1 launch, and thousands signed up to enroll in a plan. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....491281#ixzz2iSZbmQcY
Donna Frescatore, director of the New York State of Health marketplace, said Friday that 134,000 people had registered and shopped on the state’s online health care site since its Oct. 1 launch, and thousands signed up to enroll in a plan. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....491281#ixzz2iSZbmQcY
Quoted Text
The site is now operating free of significant troubles, according to Frescatore.
The 150,000 New Yorkers who have registered and been deemed eligible for insurance through NY State of Health represent more than a third of all Americans reported by the federal government to have applied for health insurance since the Oct. 1 launch of the exchanges.
Operators at the state's customer service centers have assisted more than 66,000 New Yorkers in buying insurance, Frescatore said.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
I DID look at the date your article was published Shadow... Look for yourself. Yours is PUBLISHED: MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2013,
The one that I posted from the TU is: Tuesday, October 22, 2013
So your post is out of date and that's why your post has 134,000 and mine has 150,000.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
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