To address this lack of price transparency, the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) during the Obama
administration launched a public database of charges by doctors, hospitals,
drug companies and other providers. You can find
it here. If you are a professional researcher, you might be able to figure
out which hospital in Minneapolis has the lowest posted price for a heart
transplant or any of 100 other of the most common procedures.
If Republicans really wanted patients to take more
responsibility for their health care, they would fix all that — fix it by
insisting that doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and other providers make all
their prices for all classes of customers readily available at the front desk
and on their websites. But if you look through the 123 pages of the
Republicans’ American Health Care Act that was rammed through two House
committees this week before anyone could digest it, there’s nothing about any
of that.
Nor is any mention of quality metrics. Obama’s Affordable
Care Act included a big push for the government to do what is known as
“outcomes research,” using millions of patient records to determine what
operations, what drugs, what tests were most effective in treating various
conditions. But at the insistence of Republicans, researchers cannot consider
price in their analysis, making it impossible to determine which offers the
best value. The Republican bill leaves this prohibition in place. What it does
do, however, is to repeal the small tax on group health insurance that funds
outcomes research.
Yeah, I think it's more about giving rich folks tax breaks.
In our system your employer has nothing whatsoever to do with your health insurance.
ReplyDeleteImagine my astonishment, from that perspective, at reading this in the Washington Post:
"Employers could impose hefty penalties on employees who decline to participate in genetic testing as part of workplace wellness programs if a bill approved by a U.S. House committee this week becomes law."
I believe our only hope is that this debacle becomes such a shit show that we end up getting universal health care out of it. Have no idea how that's going to work. The greater chance is of having no insurance probably.
ReplyDelete