What do you have wrong about Obamacare?

Obamacare has been confirmed as the law of the land, and the common belief that it was unconstitutional has been shown to be incorrect. 

The Affordable Care Act will affect all of us, so what other common beliefs that people have about  this law are also wrong? The following is a list of common misperceptions that I have observed.

Common belief: Obamacare is a government takeover of health care. 

ACTUALLY: The Affordable Care Act has no government plan. It preserves private plans and strengthens the private insurance market, making it easy to shop for a plan you like, while protecting people and their health. 

Common belief:  the law is just about insurance and not about cost. 

ACTUALLY: the law promotes new models, innovations, and research to start improving care while decreasing costs. Here in Whatcom County, the Whatcom Alliance for Healthcare Advancement (WAHA) has received one of these grants!

Common belief:  the law is just about insurance and not about health. 

ACTUALLY: the law creates a national Prevention Fund, and invests in training for doctors, nurses, and other needed health professionals 

Common belief:  the law is hurts small businesses. 

ACTUALLY: the law will help most small businesses a lot! Companies with less than than 50 employees get tax credits for up to 35% of employee health insurance 

premiums. Beginning in 2014,  tax credits rise up to 50% of insurance premiums. 

Common belief:  the law just  increases premiums and costs for families. 

ACTUALLY: health premiums were skyrocketing before the law, and this is a major reason for the law! Insurance companies will now have to explain why they are raising rates, and the reasons will be published on a publicly available website. If insurance companies don’t spend most of your premium dollars on health care, they are now required to send you a rebate at the end of the year. 

Common belief:  the law hurts Medicare and seniors. 

ACTUALLY: the law saves 600 million dollars by reducing extra payments to insurance companies, and strengthens Medicare to help seniors  afford prescription drugs, get annual checkups with no co-pays and to make Medicare work better for seniors and doctors. 

Common belief:  We can’t afford Obamacare

ACTUALLY: the law's expense replaces costs we already pay that have been going through the roof for years, and we can’t afford not to have it. The law extends coverage, promotes access to the right care, in the right place, and at the right time. This is one way the Affordable Care Act was designed to save money by keeping people healthier. 

Common belief:  The law is too complicated to understand.

ACTUALLY:  The basic facts are simple. 32 million more American citizens will be insured. There will be help for those who cannot afford coverage. Most insurance company abuses will end. We will start building a system that improves quality and controls cost for all of us.

If you want to be informed, ignore most of what you hear and visit HealthCare.gov which is an easy to use site that explains the law and how it is being rolled out. 

We should be ashamed. We should be angry.

What kind of a country do we want to be?

For some time now, we have been learning about the steady decline in the welfare of children in the United States.  20% of children now live in poverty, schools are often failing them, health care has been difficult to access, immunizations are down, families are stressed,  and now we are informed in an extensive new study that the newborn death rate in the United States is now higher than in 40 other countries including Malaysia, Cuba and Poland. Our previous ranking was 29.

The great tragedy here is that many of these deaths can be prevented, with improved access to appropriate medical care, leadership for effective public health education, prenatal care and parental education and support.

Access to basic health care for all needs to begin first with our children. And it is the responsibility of all of us to step in, when parents are unable to. Yes, this is a moral issue, but also in our general self interest. The well being of today's children determines our future. 

Our society is pursuing a self destructive course by failing to provide all of our children with access to good health, education and a nurturing environment to grow up in, while at the same time we indebt them by failing to pay our bills. We should be ashamed. We should be angry. This is why we need health care for all in this country. This is not the rich against the poor. All of us in these United States of America must compete against the world. There is no valid reason why our children should be handicapped in their start in life compared to those in Malaysia, Cuba and Poland. There is no  good way to spin this.

WE'RE NUMBER 41! WE'RE NUMBER 41! Does that sound right to you? And we pay more than anywhere else.

These are the countries where a baby has a better chance of living in the first critical months of life:

Luxembourg
San Marino
Iceland
Japan
Singapore
Slovenia
Sweden
Andorra
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Ireland
Italy
Monaco
Norway
Spain
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Estonia
Israel
Netherlands
New Zealand
Portugal
Switzerland
Brunei Darussalam
Canada
Croatia
Cuba
Hungary
Lithuania
Poland
Republic of Korea
United Kingdom
Malaysia
Malta
Serbia
Slovakia
Chile
Latvia
Montenegro

What's In It for Me? What are our obligations to each other?

As what passes for a health care debate rages all around us, I have come to realize that between the polarized extremes there exists a very important group of people who are the key to what will happen this fall, and that is the large group of Americans who have health insurance and who are worried they may lose advantages in any reform. All of the noise in our media is an attempt to reach this group, who are likely asking, "What's in it for me"?

I believe that those who currently have health insurance and good access to medical care would be well advised to support proposed health care reform for the following reasons:

• They may lose their insurance coverage! Right now, 14,000 insured people lose their coverage every day when they lose their job or the employer cannot continue to afford benefits, and that number is expected to increase greatly with current trends.
• Business can't afford the increasing costs! Under the current system, costs are expected to double during the next 10 years.
• Young people are priced out of the system! Those looking for work at the beginning of their careers are most likely to get jobs without benefits, leaving them uncovered and raising the cost for all others.
• Insurance often does not work when you need it, even if you have it! The for profit system is full of people who work hard to "ration your care" by figuring out how not to pay for things.
• The payment system must be reformed! Our current mess of a non system is caused by the payment incentive and lack of incentives we now have.
• Quality is often lacking! A sad and poorly understood fact is that even people with good insurance get the recommended care they should have only about 1/4 of the time. The care is not organized in a way that allows most doctors to manage their patients the best way possible.
• They may lose their doctor! Very few medical students are going in to the primary care disciplines, due primarily to the fact that they cannot afford to. Retiring family doctors are not being replaced. Reform which supports primary care is crucial to attracting the best and brightest into primary care.

When all is said and done, however, thinking just about ourselves misses one of the most important reasons for reform. Perhaps the most important thing to consider is, what are our obligations to each other? Our entire American society is engaged in global competition with all the countries on earth for the innovations, jobs, products and benefits of the world to come. We must have a society with well educated, healthy and productive citizens to secure the benefits of the future. Our companies need a level playing field that does not saddle them with the unequal and exorbitant costs of a failed system.

If the the future is scary to you, it is really not because of the risk of changing, but because we might not change. Don't be fooled.

PM Bellingham Discussion on KGMI

I had a very stimulating conversation about health care and our need for reform on the PM Bellingham radio program, hosted on KGMI radio by Jacqueline Cartier and Ken Mann. They asked great questions, and gave refreshing insight from a younger person's perspective

PM Bellingham Radio Program Link Click Here