Affordable Care Act: imploding and beyond repair
By John Geyman
The Hill, October 21, 2016
Our experience with the first six and a half years of the Affordable Care Act already tells us whether it will work.
Despite the law’s goals of containing costs and making health care affordable, it’s proven to be too expensive to be sustainable, overly complex and bureaucratic, and a gift to the private health insurance industry and other corporate stakeholders in the medical-industrial complex.
To be fair, the ACA has brought some kind of coverage to about 20 million Americans, in good part through the expansion of Medicaid in 32 states (including D.C.) and the subsidized exchanges. But its negative results far outweigh its gains, as shown by these data points:
(The article then lists concise, bulleted points with links to references that explain why ACA is beyond repair.)
Multiple studies have demonstrated that in the U.S. we could save about $500 billion a year by enacting a nonprofit single-payer national health program that streamlines administration. Those savings would be sufficient to guarantee everyone high-quality care, with no cost sharing, on a sustainable basis.
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Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
This article is a great resource that explains why the Affordable Care Act has not and will not provide us with the health care reform that we need.
The full article is relatively concise so it would take little of your time to access it today at the link above.
The Hill has a 14 day exclusivity on the article, but after that time it can be distributed widely as long as The Hill is credited and a link back to the original article is included. It would be worthwhile downloading it for your advocacy work.
