Category: Defending PPACA

Opinion | The role of faith in health-care delivery | Seattle Times Newspaper

Opinion | The role of faith in health-care delivery | Seattle Times Newspaper:

As the Catholic Church has been widening its influence and reach in American health care, it also has been flexing its muscles in health-care policy. Recently, it asserted that it should not have to provide contraception coverage to employees at church-run hospitals or universities around the country even when those employees are not Catholic, and when a large share of their salaries are paid for by tax dollars that flow through broad-based medical programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Moving beyond health care, the Catholic Church is also asserting its influence in ways that seek to expand religious-freedom protections to include the freedom to take broad-based taxpayer money and then spend that money in a manner that discriminates against Americans who don’t accept Catholic theology.

In Illinois, for example, the church recently asserted that its First Amendment right to freedom of religion is being compromised when its own discriminatory policies against gays make it ineligible for government contracts to find adoptive homes for children in need among well-qualified families, gay or straight.

In making these claims, the Catholic Church is seeking to transform a right that is vitally important — the freedom of people to decide for themselves which religion to follow without government interference or sponsorship — into a right for government support and funding for theology-based program implementation.

It’s one thing to say that because you’re using private funds, you don’t have to provide services that violate religious conscience. It’s another to accept public money in a market situation where “customers” don’t have free choice, and make that same assertion.

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President Obama Announces Accomodation on Birth Control – NYTimes.com

President Obama Announces Accomodation on Birth Control – NYTimes.com:

Just had to get this great Antonin Scalia quote up here…

It’s a law of politics that when you’re losing the debate, you change it. So with the economy improving and President Obama rising in polls against his likely general election opponent, Mitt Romney, it’s not surprising that the Republicans went looking for an inflammatory social issue. They came up with contraception, which apparently is really controversial even though 99 percent of women rely on it at some point in their lives.

I’m referring, of course, to the ridiculous brouhaha over the new health care rule mandating that businesses provide insurance coverage for birth control. The original version exempted religious institutions, like Catholic churches, but not religiously affiliated ones, like Catholic universities, that cater to the general public.

That concession wasn’t good enough for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Along with such opportunists as House Speaker John Boehner and Rick Santorum, they claimed the president was disregarding the First Amendment and assaulting religious freedom. The idea was to paint Mr. Obama as irreligious, and to chip away at the health care reform law in the process. I guess they were unaware of the 1990 Supreme Court decision Employment Division v. Smith, which established that religious liberty doesn’t trump an otherwise neutral law. As Justice Antonin Scalia, that notorious atheist, wrote: “To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”

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American Psychiatric Association – Health Reform

Health Reform:

No law as wide-ranging and complex as PPACA can satisfy all of the myriad concerns of psychiatrists, other physicians, health professionals, and patients. While PPACA is not perfect, APA’s Board of Trustees concluded that it warranted APA’s support. Among other provisions of importance to the practice of psychiatry, the law:

  • Extends coverage to 32 million more Americans;
  • Bars insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions;
  • Bars insurance companies from dropping coverage due to illness;
  • Requires insurance companies to permit enrollees to renew coverage;
  • Permits dependent children up to age 26 to be covered by their parents’ health insurance;
  • Includes mental health and substance use disorder treatment as part of the basic package of benefits in health insurance sold in state-based insurance “exchanges” created by the law;
  • Ultimately requires full parity for mental health and substance use disorder treatment in such insurance;
  • Establishes new Centers of Excellence for Depression and Bipolar Disorder;
  • Provides new research funding for postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis;
  • Ensures that patients with diagnoses of mental illness will be included in “health homes”;
  • Boosts funding for community mental health treatment options; and
  • Facilitates co-location of primary and mental health treatment centers

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The Washington Monthly – Ten Miles Square – The Quiet Triumph of Obama Care

The Washington Monthly – Ten Miles Square – The Quiet Triumph of Obama Care:

We understand why President Obama trumpeted the killing of Osama bin Laden while barely mentioning health reform, his most significant domestic accomplishment in his State of the Union address last week. Ten years after 9/11, the killing of Bin Laden was an indisputable triumph for President Obama, welcomed by almost every American. In contrast, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), enacted with only Democratic votes by the scarcest of margins in 2010, remains a complex, highly controversial piece of legislation with outcomes and costs that remain to be seen in the years ahead.

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.

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Like it or not, Obamacare forces drug company disclosure – News – ReviewJournal.com

Like it or not, Obamacare forces drug company disclosure – News – ReviewJournal.com:

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have taken the lead in writing about potential conflicts of interest between doctors and medical manufacturers. Although philosophically on opposite sides, both newspapers have raised questions in chilling stories about doctors taking money from drug and device manufacturers.

The Times’ reported that some doctors practice medicine differently if they take money and are more willing to prescribe drugs in risky and unapproved ways.

In the regulations being finalized, executives at the top would be responsible for the accuracy for that disclosure. The information would be on a searchable website so the public can check it out. About 1,100 companies would have to file reports.

Every transaction may not be dubious, but when more than one out of four doctors are paid for consulting, lectures or enrolling patients in clinical trials, you deserve to know if your doctor might have a financial interest in a particular company.

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The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah! – Forbes

The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah! – Forbes:

This is the true ‘bomb’ contained in Obamacare and the one item that will have more impact on the future of how medical care is paid for in this country than anything we’ve seen in quite some time. Indeed, it is this aspect of the law that represents the true ‘death panel’ found in Obamacare—but not one that is going to lead to the death of American consumers. Rather, the medical loss ratio will, ultimately, lead to the death of large parts of the private, for-profit health insurance industry.

Why? Because there is absolutely no way for-profit health insurers are going to be able to learn how to get by and still make a profit while being forced to spend at least 80 percent of their receipts providing their customers with the coverage for which they paid. If they could, we likely would never have seen the extraordinary efforts made by these companies to avoid paying benefits to their customers at the very moment they need it the most.

Today, that bomb goes off.

Today, the Department of Health & Human Services issues the rules of what insurer expenditures will—and will not—qualify as a medical expense for purposes of meeting the requirement.

As it turns out, HHS isn’t screwing around. They actually mean to see to it that the insurance companies spend what they should taking care of their customers.

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Medicare Costs to Seniors Under House Budget Proposal – U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee

Press Releases – Press – U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee:

A new state-by-state analysis by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) finds that in each state in the country, out-of-pocket health care costs will more than double for residents turning 65 in 2022 under the Republican budget plan passed by House Republicans in April.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a typical 65-year-old Medicare beneficiary in 2022 would see their out-of-pocket health care costs increase from $6,154 to $12,513 under the Republican budget. Using that data along with cost-sharing data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the JEC has estimated out-of-pocket costs on a state-by-state basis. While the increase varies by state, residents in all states will see their out-of-pocket expenses more than double when they turn 65 in 2022. Residents in Florida face the largest increase –$7,383.

The report also shows that current Medicare beneficiaries will be harmed by the GOP budget, immediately losing preventive services such as mammograms and facing higher prescription drug costs.

“This new JEC analysis helps to fill in the picture on just how disastrous and costly the Republican Medicare plan is for our older Americans,” said Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), Chairman of the JEC. “If Republicans have their way, traditional Medicare will no longer exist in 2022. Instead, our elderly will get a voucher to purchase private insurance, but the voucher won’t keep pace with health care costs. The result would be a staggering increase in out-of-pocket costs beginning in 2022. In my state of Pennsylvania, someone turning 65 in 2022 would face a $6,300 increase in their health care expenses. Our elderly Americans cannot afford to have their health care expenses double, but that’s exactly what the Republican plan delivers.”

The increased out-of-pocket costs result from older Americans bearing a larger share of health care costs under the Republican plan and the increase in total health care costs that results from shifting from traditional Medicare to a less efficient, more expensive voucher program.

“The Republican Medicare plan doesn’t rein in health care costs,” continued Casey. “Instead, it simply shifts the costs onto the backs of our elderly. The Republican ‘solution’ is providing our elderly with dramatically higher costs and less care. Current beneficiaries will suffer and the next generation will face retirement without Medicare and without the peace of mind it offers.”