Health Reform News That’s Going Around

O Paddy dear, an’ did ye hear the news that’s goin’ around?

The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!

And no more St. Patrick’s Day we’ll keep,his color can be seen,

For there’s a cruel law agin the wearing of the green!

Anonymous, Wearing O’ The Green (1795)

December 4, 2012 – Have ye heard the latest news about health care and the health care law that’s goin’ around?

·         According to the Richmond Dispatch,  Obamacare is driving up premiums, raising taxes, forcing companies to lay off workers or switch them to part-time work, and still leaving 30 million uninsured.  Now we learn from Minnesota that setting up health exchanges will cost the state $54 million in 2015 and $64 million in 2016.  Will the rising costs of government health reform ever cease?

 

·         At a meeting of state insurance officials, representatives from California and Rhode Island,  two states that are aggressively  implement federal exchanges, expressed alarm that young people,  who in 2014, will be forced by the law to buy insurance,  will react by paying the first year $95 fine rather than pay thousands of dollars for coverage.  Young people, it seems,  will respond the “rate shock” of high premiums.  Furthermore, being healthy , they do not see why they should pay for the health expenses of the old, infirm, and poor. 

·         A recent Gallup polls reveals that medical professionals are the most trusted people in Amerian for “honesty and ethical practices.”  Nurses polled the best, at 85%, followed by pharmacists, and doctors, 70%. HMOs managers came in at 12%, lower than journalists, lawyers, and senators, but better than car salesman.

 

·         How does the U.S, create an equitable, affordable, and accessible health system?  In my forthcoming book, A New Voice of Health Reform: The 3Rs – Rhyme, Reason & Reality: The Physician Culture and American Culture, I say it will take a transformation of American Culture, from individualism to organizational collectivism, with all parties working together focusing on patient health,  improved quality, and outcomes. 

       Maybe with the luck of the Irish and inspired leadership and with successful organizational examples, health reform will evolve.  I predict adopting health reform will take a generation. It will resemble adopting green energy.  It will take a generation for the culture to get used to different forms of energy and the technology changes necessary to implement it.