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United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps

jama.jamanetwork.com

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Re: United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps

#12
post #6

Figure 6. Medicare 30-Day, All-Condition Hospital Readmission Rate, is plotted with Y-Axis not starting from zero, which makes it look like there was a dramatic decrease. Having studied readmission rates, I was amazed, only to be disappointed as I looked at the Y-axis.

It will be nice to confirm this over the next several years, but as of now, and despite the misleading graph, it still looks to be a pretty amazing achievement.

Re: United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps

#14
The worst piece of legislation ever to be passed in the United States of America. I am a physician. My personal health insurance rate for a family of 5 increased immediately by 66% (since I have an individual policy). I have resorted to using the Medishare healthcare cost sharing plan as traditional insurance became unaffordable.

I have seen many patients lose their doctors because the doctors were not contracted with Covered California. The reason the doctors do not contract with Covered California is because at face value the plan appears to be just like the usual say PPO plan. But in fact it pays about 33% less than medicare (in other words, no different than Medi-Cal.

These are only some of the financial problems created by Obamacare. The problem with the government effectively taking over Health IT by way of forcing Electronic Health Records to abide by bureaucrats definitions for "meaningful use" is a completely different disaster that has resulted in marked decreases in productivity and worse care for patients.

Giant Hospital systems are taking over individual and group practices and turning them into corporate mills with little to no autonomy for physicians and terrible care for patients. All the while greedily taking in government and private dollars.

This is crony capitalism at its very worst.

Re: United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps

#15

The worst piece of legislation ever to be passed in the United States of America. I am a physician. My personal health insurance rate for a family of 5 increased immediately by 66% (since I have an individual policy). I have resorted to using the Medishare healthcare cost sharing plan as traditional insurance became unaffordable. I have seen many patients lose their doctors because the doctors were not contracted wit…

Hey there! Long term Obama supporter (no longer) and healthcare consumer in the US. I agree with you mostly.

Monthly premiums for my wife and I are ~$700/month (both healthy, early 30s, Blue Cross Blue Shield). When our daughter arrives shortly, that will increase to $1000/month. That's a high deductible plan where we're out of pocket for everything for the first $6000/year.

I work remotely, so we're looking at moving to Central America (Panama or Belize, wherever its cheaper to dock a 40' catamaran); if you live outside the US more than 330 days/year, you're not obligated to carry insurance. I can obtain expat insurance, that covers my entire family in every country in the world except the US, for $3000/year. $9000/year after-tax savings is nothing to sneeze at.

The ACA was a sham; it measures the insured rate, not the ability of citizens to receive the care they need. On that metric, its failing terribly. But health insurance companies are doing well at least.

EDIT: I have no problem with universal healthcare. I believe greatly in it. I despise that the federal government didn't eliminate health insurance companies entirely and move to single payer through Medicare.

Re: United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps

#16

The worst piece of legislation ever to be passed in the United States of America. I am a physician. My personal health insurance rate for a family of 5 increased immediately by 66% (since I have an individual policy). I have resorted to using the Medishare healthcare cost sharing plan as traditional insurance became unaffordable. I have seen many patients lose their doctors because the doctors were not contracted wit…

Hey there! Long term Obama supporter (no longer) and healthcare consumer in the US. I agree with you mostly. Monthly premiums for my wife and I are ~$700/month (both healthy, early 30s, Blue Cross Blue Shield). When our daughter arrives shortly, that will increase to $1000/month. That's a high deductible plan where we're out of pocket for everything for the first $6000/year. I work remotely, so we're looking at movin…

I'm pretty happy to have moved back to the US from Italy for a number of reasons, but the health care system isn't one of them. It's way, way too expensive for what it delivers: just look at costs as a percentage of GDP. It was pretty bad before, and hasn't improved a lot with this reform.

Re: United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps

#17

The worst piece of legislation ever to be passed in the United States of America. I am a physician. My personal health insurance rate for a family of 5 increased immediately by 66% (since I have an individual policy). I have resorted to using the Medishare healthcare cost sharing plan as traditional insurance became unaffordable. I have seen many patients lose their doctors because the doctors were not contracted wit…

Yeah the millions of Americans who gained health insurance are going to be real mad that a doctor had to pay a little more money for his health insurance.

Re: United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps

#18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there! Long term Obama supporter (no longer) and healthcare consumer in the US. I agree with you mostly. Monthly premiums for my wife and I are ~$700/month (both healthy, early 30s, Blue Cross Blue Shield). When our daughter arrives shortly, that will increase to $1000/month. That's a high deductible plan where we're out of pocket for everything for the first $6000/year. I work remotely, so we're looking at movin…

I'm pretty happy to have moved back to the US from Italy for a number of reasons, but the health care system isn't one of them. It's way, way too expensive for what it delivers: just look at costs as a percentage of GDP. It was pretty bad before, and hasn't improved a lot with this reform.

Indeed. The US has the highest cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP, with worse outcomes compared to most other first world countries.

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/20...

Re: United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps

#19
post #10
post #3

This is awesome. I love the listing under Author Affiliations: "1-President of the United States, Washington, DC "

Unbelievable that they publish a non-Doctor with so many potential conflicts of interest that he has to turn in a separate PDF http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2533698#A...

Where are the conflicts of interest that would affect this article? The linked form is his standard form as a government official, and lists various holdings. Actually, looking through it, his seems much more mundane than I expected—a 403(b) from when he was a professor, 529 accounts for his kids... The most interesting thing I saw was book royalties.

Re: United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps

#20

The worst piece of legislation ever to be passed in the United States of America. I am a physician. My personal health insurance rate for a family of 5 increased immediately by 66% (since I have an individual policy). I have resorted to using the Medishare healthcare cost sharing plan as traditional insurance became unaffordable. I have seen many patients lose their doctors because the doctors were not contracted wit…

ACA is the best legislation in my lifetime. It has allowed me the luxury of being able to purchase individual insurance as a cancer survivor, allowing me to spend more time with my young family instead of being chained to a 8-5 corporate job.

See, I can anecdote too.

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