Blog and News

Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice. 

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So, where are we now, almost two years after the law’s passage? A new report from the Department of Health and Human Services gives us the stats for the PPACA Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, or PCIP. After Obamacare became law, in November 2010, government officials estimated that they would spend $13,026 per high-risk pool enrollee. Nine months later, in August 2011, they revised their estimate to $28,994 per enrollee: a 123 percent increase. 

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Opposition to the IPAB crosses party lines. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee that will consider the bill today, has said he has no interest in defending the board: “I’ve never supported it, and I would certainly be in favor of abolishing it.” 

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Earlier this month, James Capretta tackled 5 of the most frequent arguments against health care reform that would move programs like Medicare into a premium support program. Capretta defends against the claim that reform would lead to cost-shifting; that Medicare is more efficient than the private market; that Medicare has not seen healthcare inflation to the degree the private market has; that the model for premium support - the Medicare Part D program, has not worked; and that government can work better to design a healthcare delivery system than the government can. 

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Secretary of HHS admits doubt that Obamacare "exchanges" will be operational by 2014 and likely at least half the states will not have one implemented. Even worse for taxpayers, the $1 Billion allocated to the program will not be insufficient to cover the costs and may require additional taxpayer support. Imagine that; another failed government program running over budget and not being operational on the scheduled date. 

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Most people agree that the way we pay for health care in the USA is broken, but they do not agree on the “fix."  PPACA (“Obamacare”) was marketed as the “fix” for all this, by way of more rules, more mandates, more taxes, more financial carrots and sticks, and more enforcement. And the cost?  Some of the costs include further loss of patient choice, and a bigger, more expensive GAME, whether it morphs into a single payer system or not. 

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A key technocratic gimmick of ObamaCare, the Accountable Care Organization, is rolling out now — but the wheels are already starting to come off. Critics warn that, instead of helping doctors and patients to make individualized treatment decisions, ACOs will empower government bureaucrats to consolidate health-care providers into top-down organizations and dictate how care is delivered — at greater cost. 

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