CHECK-IT-OUT at The New Republic: “What if They Repealed Obamacare?” by Jonathan Cohn.
A handful of Republican Governors are planning to sabotage the new health care legislation — The Affordable Care Act. They rant and rave about socialism and a government takeover of everything, all the while making dire predictions about the consequences of implementing O B A M A C A R E … sooo scary!
Jonathan Cohn explores the consequences of actually repealing the new law in this terrific article. He informs us that The Affordable Care Act, “…. would put in place a whole series of cost-cutting measures designed to promote quality medicine and, over time, curb the year-to-year spikes in health insurance premiums. The law would encourage coordination among health care providers, begin to scrutinize treatments for comparative effectiveness and link hospital payments to performance, among other things.”
The newly elected Governor of Michigan, Mike Cox, is among those trying to destroy the new law. Jonathan Cohn asks, “Does Cox think Michiganders are better off when their physicians don’t consult with one another, when they pay more for inferior treatments and when Medicare continues to pay high reimbursements to hospitals that don’t take the simple steps necessary for preventing infections around catheters? For that matter, does he think Michigan businesses — already struggling with health care costs — prefer a world in which the government doesn’t start to reduce overall health care spending?”
Maybe the Governor could explain to his constituents why insurance companies should continue to overrule doctors on decisions about their patients treatments and why it would be the smart thing to do to continue allowing stockholders to take huge profits out of everyone’s premium dollars.
Michiganders deserve an explanation as to why the senior citizens in his state should continue being stuck in the Medicare Part D doughnut hole — that massive gap that Medicare recipients now face in prescription drug coverage — that the new health care law gradually closes.
Of course, what’s true for Michigan is true for the rest of the country.
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