Audits and investigations into the effects of ObamaCare from congressional committees, government auditors, advocacy groups, and others.
“Bending the cost curve is not a matter of simply paying less for a service. What’s needed is real and continuous productivity improvement in the health sector. Doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, labs, clinics and others finding better ways to deliver higher quality care at less cost. Because if productivity in the health sector does not rise, then payment-rate reductions will simply drive willing suppliers of services out of the marketplace.”
“What would you call a health-insurance program that has worse health outcomes for cancer and heart disease than Medicare or private insurance, that pays doctors and specialists so little that they often refuse to see patients, and that’s driving state budgets into bankruptcy? If you’re the Obama administration, apparently, you call it a success and make it the cornerstone of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health-care-reform legislation passed in March 2010 that is better known as Obamacare.”
“The 2011 National Physicians Survey, conducted by Thomson Reuters/HCPlexus and polling almost 3,000 American doctors, shows that while Obama are would raise spending, premiums, overall U.S. health costs, and debt, it wouldn’t raise the quality of American health care. Rather, by a margin of well over 3 to 1, doctors expect the quality of American health care to decline over the next five years, in the wake of Obamacare’s passage: Only 18 percent of doctors expect the quality of health care to ‘improve,’ while a whopping 65 percent expect it to ‘deteriorate.'”
“Obamacare has led to one more health insurance company withdrawing from the market. This means less competition, fewer choices, higher rates. Aetna is pulling out of the Colorado market as of 2/1/2011. They will no longer offer health insurance for individuals, families or self employed in Colorado.”
“Health insurers in 34 states have stopped selling child-only insurance policies as a result of the health reform law, and the market continues to destablize.
According to a survey of state insurance departments by Republican Senate committee staff and obtained by POLITICO, states that have seen carriers exit the market include those that have been ardent supporters of the health reform law, like California and Oregon. Twenty states now have no insurers offering child-only policies.”
“Residents in 20 states can no longer purchase new child-only policies as a result of the Democrats’ healthcare reform law, according to a survey released Thursday by Republicans on the Senate Health committee.”
“Medicare Advantage (MA) plans are private insurance options available to Medicare beneficiaries. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) cuts deeply into the projected payments to MA plans. Millions of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in MA plans, or who would have been enrolled if not for the cuts, will experience very substantial reductions in the value of health care services provided to them by the Medicare program.”
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2009, there were approximately 540,000
physicians working in the United States. If these physicians react similarly to pediatricians, and
the PPACA Medicaid expansion is proportionately similar to the implementation of SCHIP, this
reduction would amount to a decrease in hours spent on patient care of approximately 15,000 full
time equivalent physicians. While there are a multitude of other components in the PPACA that
should affect physician labor supply, it is clear that the expansion could have a large effect on the
number of hours spent on patient care in the short run.”
“An estimated 32 million to 34 million individuals will gain public or private health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Insured individuals consume nearly twice as much health care as the uninsured, on the average. Thus, EMS utilization will likely increase; however, the ACA does not provide funds to pay for increased EMS use. This will force local governments to choose between raising taxes, finding alternative revenue sources or reducing emergency services.”
“The problem is that the board is prohibited by law from proposing real structural reforms. The only cuts it is allowed to make would be cutting providers’ reimbursements—including administrative costs and profit margins of Medicare Advantage plans, which are already slated for a payment freeze and future cuts under the new law.”