AHCA – Page 2 – The Health Care Blog

Now What, Mr. President? Here’s What.

Mar 26, 2017• 7

By STEVEN FINDLAY

In the wake of the AHCA’s demise, most lawmakers and policy experts agree that Congress will put repeal and replace aside for the rest of 2017.

As House Speaker Paul Ryan acknowledged on Friday that means the ACA/Obamacare remains the law for the “foreseeable future.”

Thus, as was widely reported over the weekend, that begs the question: how will the Trump administration administer the law and when might be the right time to return to the issue of fixing and improving it (however you want to label that.)

This is unknowable at the moment. The President, although inconsistent in his remarks, threatened to let the ACA “explode” this year and in 2018, thus forcing Democrats, in his mind, to beg him to fix it. At the same time, he said maybe the legislation’s demise was the “best thing” that could have happened since it would allow him to work with Democrats to craft an ACA replace or fix bill that would win their votes, bypassing the hard-right Freedom Caucus block in the House.

They’re Taking Selfies in the Streets …

Mar 26, 2017• 1

BY JOHN IRVINE

Filed under: Worth 10,000 words.

Taken as word of the Trump administration’s decision to pull the AHCA broke Friday afternoon, a selfie by Sean Patrick Maloney (D-Cold Spring) @RepSeanMaloney quickly went viral on Twitter.

Dr. Noseworthy and the AHCA

Mar 24, 2017• 128

NIRAN AL-AGBA, MD

The CEO of the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Noseworthy, was last heard recommending patients fire their physicians suffering from burnout. While he does not have truckloads of compassion or empathy for colleagues; he is, at least, honest. Dr. Noseworthy recently confessed “We’re asking…if the patient has commercial insurance, or they’re Medicaid or Medicare patients and they’re equal that we prioritize the commercial insured patients enough so… We can be financially strong at the end of the year to continue to advance our mission.” The ‘ailing’ nonprofit generated a paltry $475 million last year.

During his speech, Noseworthy noted the “tipping point” was the recent 3.7% surge in Medicaid patients as a direct result of ACA Medicaid expansion. “If we don’t grow the commercially insured patients, we won’t have income at the end of the year to pay our staff, pay the pensions, and so on,” he said. These are difficult decisions to make by rationing access to healthcare for the poor. It is a moral dilemma those of us in independent practices have been facing for some time.

Mayo will continue taking all patients, regardless of pay or source, and this policy exempts those seeking emergency care.

In the Land of the Health Care Experts

Mar 23, 2017• 17

By ANISH KOKA, MD

Arguably, the most consequential moment of the nascent Trump administration will take place later today when Congress Votes on the first iteration of the bill known as the American Health Care Act (AHCA). If the success or failure of the bill to this point is to be judged by its reception from policy thinkers on most sides of the political spectrum, it is already an unmitigated failure.

It should be worth noting, however, that healthcare in America is a massive business accounting for 3 trillion dollars in spending with powerful stakeholders. Any real attempt at reform is bound to be opposed by those who would naturally resist attempts to dam the river of dollars that flows to them. The resistance from these parties always comes in the form of entreaties to think about patients harmed by whatever change is trying to be made.

Figuring out which stakeholder actually has the patients best interests at heart is akin to playing a shell game. All the cups look the same and its entirely possible the marble is underneath none of the cups. As a physician, I am of course, another stakeholder with inherent bias but I would submit that practicing physicians, among all the players at the table, have their interests most aligned with the patients they must directly answer to every day.Continue reading…