Audits and investigations into the effects of ObamaCare from congressional committees, government auditors, advocacy groups, and others.
“To stay in business under ObamaCare, doctors will have to adjust. Some will see fewer patients themselves and hire nurse practitioners to help carry the load; others will work part-time and supplement their income elsewhere. Many will join groups or become salaried employees of hospitals or clinics.”
“Parente offers a clear, market-oriented alternative to the current centralized health-IT procurement approach, which is supplemented with insufficient bribes and penalties to achieve private-sector compliance with interoperability standards. He concludes that this more practical “back to the future” path to harnessing health information in real time can deliver
long-overdue dividends in medical-fraud control, insurance-coverage administration and underwriting, and improved health care quality.”
ObamaCare created an unworkable cost-control method when it proposed Accountable Care Organizations to manage care in Medicare. Medicare’s payment board is predicting that they will have negative consequences and is calling for them to be pared back.
Seniors are facing growing difficulties in seeing doctors who accept Medicare patients. Medicare reimbursement rates are very low, and ObamaCare is scheduled to make them much lower, driving doctors out of the program.
“If ACOs become the only possibility for organizing, financing and delivering care, physicians and patients alike will find themselves in a treatment straightjacket. Thus, government should not give ACOs a competitive edge. If the ACO is such a good idea, let it develop in an open pluralistic market with no subsidy or other government advantage.”
“Responses to the survey combined with written comments received from physicians strongly indicate that most
physicians are not favorably disposed toward health reform and are pessimistic about its potential effects on
their practices. As reform is being implemented, many physicians plan to take steps that would remove them
from patient care or limit patient access to their practices.”
“Of all the scary scenarios predicted for the new health law this is among the scariest: A new survey of doctors predicts the rapid extinction of the private-practice physician. A survey of some 2,400 MDs from around the country found nearly three quarters said they plan to retire, work part-time, stop taking new patients, become an employee, or seek a non-clinical position in the next one to three years.”
“Liberal consumer groups are aghast to learn that the Obama health team are really monopolists at heart, bent on handing hospitals a cartel in their local markets. Sunday’s New York Times report on this horror confirms what I wrote about in these pages weeks ago… I warned that the creation of ‘accountable care organizations,’ which put hospitals in control of all the doctors in their outlying areas, would lead to concentrated power over the provision of medical care–turning physicians into salaried employees and reducing consumer choices.”
ObamaCare mandates that plans allow children to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26. This raises premium costs, driving many plans to drop coverage for dependents altogether. “One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said.”
ObamaCare was rushed through the legislative process, and a drafting error could sharply limit access to life-saving drugs for children. “The error was a simple and unintentional omission in the final, frenetic days of drafting the landmark legislation and reconciling House and Senate versions. Con gressional staff intended to allow children’s hospitals continued access to the portion of a federal program that offers below-market prices on 347 specific medicines for rare, life-threatening conditions. But that language was accidentally altered.”