Mar
31
Health Care– #12 – Josh Hirth
March 31, 2015 | Leave a Comment
The NYT article titled, Obama Health Law: Who it helped most, gave me an interesting perspective on something that hasn’t been really talked about. It discussed whom the law helped the most. According to their findings the law helped the people who seemingly needed it most, blacks, Hispanics, and people who live in rural America. Even women got more help from it than men. However, while the more extreme estimates state “that the national uninsured rate for adults under 65 fell to 11 percent from 16 percent”, I don’t believe that is enough. Obamacare, in many cases gives away health insurance for free, and in other cases it is virtually free. For a law that was sold as “insuring everyone in America” Having 11% uninsured should not be acceptable!
While the healthcare law is helping to level the playing feel in some respects, there is still a sizable gap. “The director of analytics and data at Enroll, said he attributed the racial trends to two main factors: existing high uninsured rates for those groups, and disproportionate poverty, meaning more people who qualify for Medicaid.” I don’t think that’s enough of a justification, if the insurance is free or almost free, then we should have seen a virtually 100% enrollment. One thing that is not refutable about Obamacare, is that it was targeting the poorer among us, and at that it seems to be pretty effective. In its essence, it was a large-scale wealth redistribution effort that has had success in taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Only time will tell if we will begin introducing new such legislation to do the same…
Lyla Turner’s story is truly heartwarming. A 50 year old women in a medial job, given the opportunity to go back to school, partly because of the government subsidy she gets for her insurance. It truly sounds like the American dream, but as is the case with Mark Segina it is not all hunky dory. Many people, including Mark Segina, still cant afford the insurance premiums. As I continued reading the article the flaws of the healthcare exchange have become more and more obvious. Like everything else government run, bureaucracy and fraud gets in the way of making things happen. That has long been a criticism of Obamacare, and was used to try and prevent it from happening, and unfortunately it seems to have become the reality.
The NYT article titled “Is the affordable care act working” gives a look at all of the fundamental aspects of Obamacare and a look at what has changed since its adoption. It discusses how uninsured Americans have dropped by about 25% this year, through the use of the exchanges as well as the broadening of the Medicaid program. However regarding the affordability of the Affordable Healthcare act, “by requiring insurers to provide a broader array of benefits and to cover people with pre-existing conditions — caused premiums to rise for some who already had insurance.” This was a horrific unintended consequence of a bill that many people agree wasn’t fully thought out.
One thing that was not discussed at length, is the actual healthcare that these patients under expanded Medicaid and cheaper private insurance get. It is widely known in the medical field that many doctors do not except Medicaid because of how it pays, and so Medicaid patients have always had limited choice when it comes to their medical professional. By expanding Medicaid, we aren’t resolving the underlying issue of how to get doctors to except it, because without medical professionals willing to see you, what is the point of having the insurance in the first place. There have been many repots of doctors who used to take Medicaid, dropping the insurance because it no longer made sense for them. They don’t want their practices to become all Medicaid patients, where they are paid, in many cases, more than 30% less than the Medicare insurance rate. So while Obamacare has helped “insure America”, is it really changing the healthcare Americans are getting?
