Category: Investigations

“As the state moves to expand healthcare coverage to millions of Californians under President Obama’s healthcare law, it faces a major obstacle: There aren’t enough doctors to treat a crush of newly insured patients. Some lawmakers want to fill the gap by redefining who can provide healthcare.”

“A coalition of medical specialties said Tuesday that it supports a bill to repeal the controversial cost-control board in President Obama’s signature healthcare law. The Alliance of Specialty Medicine — a coalition of specialty groups including brain surgeons, plastic surgeons and heart doctors — said it wants Congress to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).”

“A core idea at the heart of President Obama’s healthcare reform law is the notion that while expanding coverage is expensive, there are huge offsetting savings to be had from reforming how medicine is practiced by doctors and hospitals. Who knows, maybe a third of the $2.7 trillion spent on healthcare is wasted… And if that research is wrong? Well, then we have a problem. And a paper from a Federal Reserve economist suggests just that.”

“The American Medical Association praised the reintroduction Wednesday of a bill to repeal the controversial Medicare payments board in President Obama’s healthcare law. Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) reintroduced his bill to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) — a panel of 15 healthcare experts with the power to cut Medicare payments to doctors if spending grows faster than a prescribed rate.”

“The Obama administration says it’s identified hospitals that provide patients with the most value under a new ObamaCare bonus program. Unfortunately, they turn out to be the very same facilities that the sweeping health care law tries to block from expanding. ObamaCare has impeded the expansion of the hospitals that may provide patients with the most value according to the results of an ObamaCare bonus program.”

“The fundamental flaws in our system are familiar: perverse incentives that encourage excess treatment, high prices, poor service (even dangerous sloppiness), incomprehensible complexity and a flawed safety net. But to all such problems the new health-care law has the same two answers: more insurance and Medicaid and more top-down cost control.”

“As we have seen, the same bill that insures 32 million new people also will force middle- and upper-middle-income families to have more generous coverage than they now have. As these more generously insured people attempt to acquire more medical services they will almost certainly out-bid people paying Medicaid rates for doctor services and hospital beds. To make matters worse, the health reform bill did nothing to increase the supply side of the market to meet the increased demand.”

“The United States will require at least 52,000 more family doctors in the year 2025 to keep up with the growing and increasingly older U.S. population, a new study found.
The predictions also reflect the passage of the Affordable Care Act — a change that will expand health insurance coverage to an additional 38 million Americans.”

“Tuesday night’s win in the presidential contest for President Obama was a win for ObamaCare, the president’s signature legislation from his first term. ObamaCare will now continue to be implemented. This future means that we will continue to be faced with rising insurance premiums, as our current insurance expands to cover all patients regardless of pre-existing condition, age, or how many times they’ve already used the policy.”

“U.S. health care suffers from three major problems: millions of people go without insurance, health care costs are rising at unaffordable rates, and the quality of care is not what it should be. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) primarily addresses the first — and easiest — of these problems by expanding coverage to a substantial number of the uninsured. Solutions to the other two remain aspirations and promises.”