The Problem With Free Health Care
By H. Gilbert Welch
The New York Times, April 30, 2014
The Affordable Care Act does have its flaws. Here’s a big one: It favors screening over diagnosis.
While the distinction may seem arcane, it has real-world implications. Screening is what we offer to the well; it’s the effort to find abnormalities in those who do not have signs or symptoms of disease. Because screening is considered part of preventive care under the Affordable Care Act, it is provided at no charge.
Diagnosis is what we offer to those who do have signs or symptoms of disease. Because diagnosis is not preventive care, it is subject to deductibles and co-payments.
I wish money wasn’t such a powerful incentive in medical care. But the economists are right: Incentives matter. Right now they favor lower risk patients (those being screened) over higher risk ones (those with signs and symptoms).
They also encourage a feeding frenzy among providers to recategorize diagnostic testing as screening. Free screenings were seen as a way to get people through the door and ideally to find and address problems before they become more dangerous and expensive.
But in practice, it may not work this way. Some hospitals offer free screening knowing full well that the costs will be more than made up for by all the subsequent services required. More testing, false alarms and overdiagnosis are all part of screening. And if you make it free, patients are less likely to give proper consideration to these potential harms — not to mention the potential for a lot of out-of-pocket costs down the line.
Here’s the fix: Eliminate the incentive mismatch between screening and diagnosis. Treat them equally.
We need people to consider medical care carefully, and that’s what cost sharing is all about.
****
When Cost Deters Care
Letters, The New York Times, May 8, 2014
To the Editor:
H. Gilbert Welch is right to be concerned that patients will forgo diagnostic mammograms, colonoscopies and other kinds of care for serious conditions if they aren’t free, as “prevention” is under the Affordable Care Act (“The Problem With Free Health Care,” Op-Ed, May 1).
Studies show that even patients who need emergency care for a potentially serious problem will go without it if they are in a high-deductible health plan (although this increases their risk of subsequent hospitalization). And therein lies the problem. While cost sharing discourages overuse of medical care, it worsens a greater problem, that of underuse.
In an 11-nation survey by the Commonwealth Fund, more than a third (37 percent) of Americans reported not going to the doctor when sick or not filling a prescription because of cost, compared with a small percentage of people in Britain, Sweden and Norway. The difference: They have single-payer systems in which care is generally free at the point of service.
Ida Hellander
Chicago, May 2, 2014
The writer is director of health policy and programs for Physicians for a National Health Program.
****
Access, Affordability, and Insurance Complexity Are Often Worse in the United States Compared to 10 Other Countries
By Cathy Schoen, Robin Osborn, David Squires, and Michelle M. Doty
The Commonwealth Fund, November 13, 2013
Synopsis
A 2013 survey conducted in 11 countries finds that U.S. adults are significantly more likely than their counterparts to forgo health care because of the cost, to have difficulty paying for care even when they have insurance, and to deal with time-consuming insurance issues.
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Publications/In-the-Literature/2013/Nov/Access-Affordability-and-Insurance.aspx
USPSTF A and B Recommendations: http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsabrecs.htm
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
H. Gilbert Welch has been a leading voice in warning us about the costs and adverse consequences of overdiagnosis. When there is little benefit but greater potential harm and expense for a given diagnosis, it usually would be better if that diagnosis had never been made. This is especially true when a screening test is done on a healthy individual if it leads to a diagnosis that will be of no help but could result in harm to the patient.
When should screening tests be done? The decisions should be made by patients after their health care professionals provide them with adequate information regarding the potential benefits and adverse consequences of the screening procedures. That advice should reflect the latest information available from sources such as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). In fact, the Affordable Care Act specifically covers, without charge, level A and B preventive service recommendations of the USPSTF. (Link above – USPSTF recommendations are updated as new information becomes available.)
Dr. Welch would add one other consideration. He would require patients to pay a portion of the costs for the screening tests just as they would for diagnostic testing used to evaluate specific symptoms or signs. It is well known that if people have to pay for screening tests that they should have, many will decline them simply because of the expense. This can result in adverse health outcomes or even death. If a screening test warrants an A or B USPSTF rating, its benefits do outweigh the potential harm, and it should be offered to the patient without placing it behind a “paywall” (deductible, coinsurance or copayment).
Dr. Welch has it backwards. We should eliminate the incentive mismatch between screening and diagnosis, but we should do that by removing the paywalls for diagnostic and therapeutic services rather than creating new ones for preventive screening.
PNHP’s director of health policy, Ida Hellander, has it exactly right. Rather than overuse, we have a much greater problem with underuse of beneficial health care services, and cost-sharing paywalls worsen that problem.
The Commonwealth Fund study that Dr. Hellander cites shows that the United States has a much greater cost-related access problem than do the other ten wealthy nations studied, yet those nations spend far less on total health care than we do, without the necessity of erecting these paywall financial barriers to care.
We can thank Dr. Welch for his great work in explaining to us the potential negative consequences of screening tests. With this information we can better inform the patient who has to make the decision on undergoing screening. But we can also thank Dr. Hellander for her great work on explaining to us why health care should be based on patient need rather than on the patient’s ability to pay.
Quite simply, patients should have the care that medical science dictates they should have, if they want it, but not denied that care because they feel they cannot afford it.
