A Quiet Triumph of Obama Care

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2012/01/a_quiet_triumph_of_obama_care035079.php

A Quiet Triumph of Obama Care

By Harold Pollack and Greg Anrig

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Yet surprising even to many advocates of health care reform, evidence is emerging that the ACA is already improving life for millions of average Americans. It is promoting long-overdue fundamental changes in our dysfunctional medical system. Moreover, because those reforms are starting to directly address heightened economic insecurities of average families - the personal financial conditions that will largely determine this year’s election outcomes - President Obama would be wise to more forcefully and more specifically explain how his health care bill is already helping millions of vulnerable families and the country as a whole. Sure, financially-pressured families will celebrate the derring-do of Seal Team Six. They should directly appreciate the immediate impact of improved insurance coverage and reduced medical costs.

Here are five concrete realms in which the Affordable Care Act, which won’t even take full effect until 2014, has already had an impact:
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The Affordable Care Act brings greater fairness, transparency, and integrity to private insurance. The ACA changes the basic business model of private insurance. Firms will no longer prosper by cherry-picking healthy consumers or denying coverage for basic care. The federal government now partners with states in scrutinizing large insurance plan rate increases. Such heightened public exposure and regulatory scrutiny has already induced major plans to moderate or to reverse large rate increases. Patients also are now entitled to greater due process, including external review, when their health plan fails to cover medical therapies. Because of “medical loss ratio” regulations, insurers are now required to devote the lion’s share of their premium dollars to patient care.

President Obama’s health care reform has radically transformed the status quo and provoked such bitter political battles with moneyed interests. His political advisers and pollsters can be forgiven if they feel some skittishness about attracting further controversy related to the ACA. They understandably and rightly wish to focus on issues of jobs and economic security. Yet secure access to affordable health care is intimately related to these latter economic concerns. The ACA’s full benefits won’t be felt until 2014. Yet the measures now in place are proving more important and more valuable than even many ACA supporters realize.

Health reform has already improved the humanity and effectiveness of our health care system. President Obama is entitled, and obliged, to embrace his own signature domestic policy accomplishment.

[zipplewrath]

1. What a crock

Giant piece of propaganda. Short on actual numbers, long on hyperbolic declarations. Takes credit for anything and everything that has changed in the last 2 years that's positive, doesn't mention anything negative, other than acknowledging that health CARE costs continue to rise.

It takes credit for my companies various health inititiative, even thought they started years before Obama was even elected. And it represents them as something totally positive, even thought they are aimed at getting the company more invasive into my health care choices. And it skims right over the continuing trend towards cost shifting from the company to the employee.

[Hoyt]

2. Well, when Exchanges are up and running and pre-existing is gone, you can buy your own insurance.

And you can tell your employer to stuff it.

There are a lot of things left undone in health care reform -- but what passed is a whole lot better than we had before. There will be more coming too for the exact reasons you cite.

[zipplewrath]

5. Not a "whole lot better"

It's not even a "whole lot different". And even the White House admits that costs will continue to rise at roughly 7% for CARE in the forseeable future. Is your salary going up at 7% per year?

Thre are alot of things left undone, and thanks to this law, it will be a long time until it does get done. The most likely scenario is the GOP will end up bring in the single payer law. Wait 'till ya see what kinda mandates THEY wanna pass.

[babylonsister]

3. Pollack's background is here-please let me know your expertise, thanks...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-pollack

Harold Pollack is Helen Ross Professor of Social Service Administration, and Faculty Chair of the Center for Health Administration Studies at the University of Chicago. He has published widely at the interface between poverty policy and public health. His recent research concerns HIV and hepatitis prevention efforts for injection drug users, drug abuse and dependence among welfare recipients and pregnant women, infant mortality prevention, and child health. His research appears in such journals as Addiction, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Public Health, Health Services Research, Pediatrics, and Social Service Review. His essay, "Lessons from an Emergency Room Nightmare," was selected for The Best American Medical Writing, 2009.

Edit to add Anrig:

http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/04/inf/AnrigGreg.html

Greg Anrig is Vice President for Policy at The Century Foundation where he has been responsible for overseeing The Century Foundation's projects on public policy as well as its fellows since 1994. He is author of The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing (John Wiley & Sons, September 2007). He is also co-editor of four collections of essays: Liberty Under Attack: Reclaiming Our Freedoms in An Age of Terror (PublicAffairs, 2007); Immigration's New Frontiers: Experiences from the Emerging Gateway States (The Century Foundation Press, 2006); The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism (PublicAffairs, 2003), and Social Security Reform: Beyond the Basics, (The Century Foundation Press, 1999). Anrig is also a regular contributor to TPMCafe and Guardian Unlimited. Previously, he was a staff writer and Washington correspondent for Money magazine.

[zipplewrath]

6. And it's still propoganda

Especially by the strictest of definitions. These are ADVOCATES for this bill.

Read the thing, it hardly is presented as an objective critique now is it?

[Hoyt]

7. Heck, most of the ACA doesn't even kick in until 2014. Yet, you've deemed it worthless.

[zipplewrath]

9. Not sure what that has to do with the OP

ACA was intended to not change very much, that was a stated goal of Obama's, that most people wouldn't notice. He succeeded.

It was a huge collection of little bits of things wrapped up into one big bill, with a mandate thrown on top to make it look palitable to the GOP and the insurance companies. And they dumped the public option and never let single payer into the room. They succeed in getting zip in the way of GOP support, and the insurance companies campaigned against it as well. The Dems didn't run on it when they lost control of the House, and as the original article complained, they STILL aren't running on it.

Not's not me deeming it "worthless", they don't even want to run on it. They succeeded in passing a bill that wouldn't affect most people, and in the process they assured it wouldn't correct the overwhelming problem of health CARE costs that continue to rise at unsustainable rates. People are paying more and more and working more years because of the huge uncertainty in health CARE availability in the future.

Did you see any of that in the OP?

[Hoyt]

12. Appears you did not read article. There are criticisms and cost concerns.

Truth is, until we are ready to accept tightly controlled HMO type care and some "rationing", cost will never stop rising.

I'm still glad more people can get insurance, pre-existing will end in 2014, there are incentives for better coordination of care, etc., in legislation that did pass.

Single payer would have been better, but not as affordable as most people want.

[babylonsister]

8. Because you say so? I've been reading

articles by Pollack for awhile, and he's been very critical at times, so this was good to see. And I defer to him as he is far more knowledgeable than I about the effect of the ACA now and in the future.

[zipplewrath]

11. And what did you read?

Really, go back and read the article. What has changed, how many has it affected, what are the down sides? How much of that information is in that article? It's an advocacy piece, and a puff one at that. Little in the way of numbers, no acknowledgement at all of the legitimate criticisms about the bill. And they never really attempt to answer the question of why the White House and the Congress haven't been running on the results of the bill.

[Whisp]

4. can't be true. Obama wants to kill the elderly and sick.

I read it here. One by one or in huge masses - that's still to be decided.

[ScreamingMeemie]

10. A just as quiet tragedy of Obama Care...

Healthy children (of parents with preexisting conditions or those who cannot afford a family plan) are no longer insurable in our country.


There are many things we can applaud Obama for. This isn't one of them.

[babylonsister]

13. Have you reseached this? And what would make you happy?

People with pre-existing conditions are next. As a cancer survivor w/o insurance, I am jazzed for my turn!

[ScreamingMeemie]

14. Yep. My son is now on catastrophic insurance because major insurance companies

won't cover him. We tried every single one and it is a loophole so that they can also turn down children with pre-existing conditions. They just don't cover any of them.

I can't get Remicaid treatments because I cannot get a doctor to okay them without a workup (prepaid out of pocket).
This morning my resting BP was 187/118 and my heartrate was 120. I am sad that there's a pretty good chance I won't be around to see my turn, my son graduate etc...

But it is the fact that my son is uninsurable that cuts the worst. He's completely healthy. They won't insure him on a single policy without me. High risk coverage in my state will not cover him as a rider. Catastrophic (temporary insurance, because you have to re-up every 11 months) insurance for him is currently costing me $425/quarter.

Believe me. I have researched this. Because I want to live. What would make me happy? Living. While paying for a decently priced insurance plan. I am willing to pay, I just can't afford a mortgage payment in premiums, $10,000 deductibles and copays.

Yeah, I know it's a pony. I did the only thing I could. I increased my life insurance.

[ellisonz]

15. You gotta be strong...

Health insurance reform, much less health care reform, is a massive problem for this country, and I undoubtedly agree that we don't get anywhere denying that there are still issues. I'd like to see an Obamacare II bill after the election. Regulate health insurance costs directly for an even larger portion of Americans.

[babylonsister]

16. Thanks for your reply,

and you have my ear and sympathies. I'm sort of in the same boat; got a divorce, lost my insurance, have pre-existing, p/t work, no insurance. I haven't even bothered looking for any, and went off all the meds I was on because I cannot afford them.

There's not much I can say except 'hang in there'. That's what I'm trying to do, but I do see a light at the end of this tunnel.

[dennis4868]

18. I applaud Obama loud and clear...

for ObamaCare...I know a few peeople who had pre-existing conditions and their lives have been saved...also can't wait for the public exchanges to kick in in 2014 so that will drive down the prices for coverage. My wife also gets free preventative care...THANK YOU PRESIDENT OBAMA and i understand that change happens in baby steps just like everything else in history.

[ScreamingMeemie]

19. Thanks for taking the time to kick a person when she's down.

Another reason why this is a quiet tragedy. My son deserves his mother. My son, a healthy 13 year old should, in the very least, be insurable. He's not, on a child only plan, now.

You have a nice day now.

[dennis4868]

17. even though it's all true....

who cares...we didn't get the public option...even though my next door neighbor's life was saved because of Obama care, who cares, we didn't get the public option so it means nothing to me. <Sarcasm>