Establish the Community-based Collaborative Care Network Program to support consortiums of health care providers to coordinate and integrate health care services, for low-income uninsured and underinsured populations.
Establish a new trauma center program to strengthen emergency department and trauma center capacity.
Improve access to care by increasing funding by $11 billion for community health centers and the National Health Service Corps over five years; establish new programs to support school-based health centers and nurse-managed health clinics.
Establish Teaching Health Centers to provide payments for primary care residency programs in community-based ambulatory care providers.
The misaligned economic incentive structure in the health sector create waste and worsen care. ObamaCare does not fix this problem. “The legislation accordingly focuses
on broadening access by means of insurance reform and not on
changing the incentives driving health care treatment and overall spending. Indeed, on numerous occasions, Congress and
the administration pulled their punches in addressing those
problems — usually by trading stricter reforms in those areas
for coverage provisions that they valued more.”
ObamaCare is so politically radioactive, even Democratic Congressmen are recoiling from it. “Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.) said this week that Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) handling of healthcare reform was the last straw influencing his decision to oppose her as speaker if the Democrats keep control of the House. “
“The individual mandate, however, asserts authority over citizens that have done nothing; they’re merely declining to purchase health insurance. This regulation of inactivity cannot find a constitutional warrant in either the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, or Congress’s taxing power. Such legislation is not ‘necessary’ to regulating interstate commerce in that it violates the Supreme Court’s distinction between economic activity (which often falls under congressional power as currently interpreted) and non-economic activity (which, to date, never has), it is not ‘proper’ in that it commandeers citizens into an undesired economic transaction.”
The Administration promises to use political pressure to force insurers to take the blame for limited benefits and cost overruns. “This is one way ObamaCare imposes price controls. The legislation requires lots of new health insurance benefits—benefits that come with a cost. But Democrats sold it by telling people they would get more and pay less. It was a lie, and now Sebelius has to fain shock at the price increases.”
“The CBO estimates that about 32 million individuals will gain health coverage due to the PPACA – about half of whom will be covered by Medicaid. However, about 23 million people will remain uninsured in 2019 – nearly half the 50.7 million today. This figure may be wishful thinking. The penalties for forgoing health coverage are less than the cost of coverage ($695 per individual or 2.5 percent of income). Furthermore, new federal regulations will require insurers to accept all applicants regardless of health status. An unintended consequence of this is that many will wait until they become sick to enroll in health coverage. In the short run, the PPACA may cause 1.4 million people to lose their limited benefit health plans, when new regulations implemented on September 23, 2010, will ban annual caps on benefits.”
“Congressional Quarterly has produced a July 21 letter from Sen. Harry Reid to Secretary of Health and Human Service Kathleen Sebelius. In it, Reid complains that ObamaCare’s cuts to Medicare will ‘result in a net reduction in payment to Nevada’s hospitals when they are unable to absorb such a cut.’ Furthermore, he questions the method used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to calculate the payments to hospitals, and he is ‘very concerned about potential effects on beneficiary access if this regulation is finalized without adjustment.’ Did Senator Reid finally read the bill, almost four months after passing it and a year after masses of Americans began to demand that Congress do so?”