Florida panel: As the debate goes on, health care reform is already happening
But they disagreed over what greater access to health care will mean, and whether individual patients will be better from it (the 2010 ACA). That depends on whether a wholesale redesign of the health care delivery system — already under way — succeeds in catching enough patients before their problems become more costly to treat.
Madelyn Butler, an obstetrician and founder of the Woman’s Group, a 15-doctor practice in Tampa ... said she envisioned a future of “long waits, allied health professionals taking care of you instead of physicans, and one doctor in charge of 20 nurse practitioners. The overall quality of care for everyone is going to diminish.”
But Clifton Gaus, a health policy expert who served in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and lives in Manatee County, painted a more hopeful picture. He called the Affordable Care Act “the single most important piece of health legislation since Medicare. The result of it will be to increase access for millions and — we hope — lower costs.”
Finding those cost efficiencies is key to the success of health care reform, said Gwen MacKenzie, CEO of Sarasota Memorial Health Care System and the third member of the panel, moderated by Herald-Tribune opinion editor Tom Tryon. ... The mandate to purchase insurance — the act’s most controversial aspect — is essential, said Gaus and MacKenzie.
“If people aren’t required to have insurance, they won’t,” MacKenzie said. “The point is, if it’s not mandated, then the system doesn’t work because there has to be a balance between the sick and the well.”
http://health.heraldtribune.com/2012/01/11/as-debate-goes-on-health-care-reform-is-already-happening/