The Thing About Polls Is…
I hate “healthcare polls” because in a broken system people just come off confused. Reuter’s latest poll shows:
- Sixty-five percent of Americans said in the poll that they are “very concerned” about the overall cost of health insurance, including premiums, deductibles and copays.
- Sixty-six percent of U.S. adults who took part in the survey said they were concerned about their ability to see a doctor of their choice going forward.
Okay, these seem reasonable. Then there was this:
- The poll also showed that 58 percent of Americans think Congress should keep the Affordable Care Act either entirely as it is, or with some fixes, while 24 percent think lawmakers should repeal it once an alternative law is passed and 18 percent want the ACA to be repealed immediately.
Uh….what? The Affordable Care Act helped skyrocket the cost of health insurance (more than those bastards had even done before). It was not affordable. Also, more than anything else it accelerated patients switching from the doctors of their choice. And yet people still cling to the “new” status quo. I guess we all fear change and I get that.
It really is going to be tough make most people happy. This is why Congress can’t pass anything. This is why revolutionary ideas may not hard to create but they sure are hard to execute.
“Also, more than anything else it made patients switch from the doctors of their choice”
There is nothing in the ACA that requires the establishment of narrow networks, the underlying cause of patients “losing” their docs. That’s purely a profit-maximizing strategy created by insurers and has been the trend for over a decade in all types of health insurance – individual, employer-provided, and Medicare Advantage. This trend was picking up speed well before the initiation of the ACA.
There’s a lot to criticize in the ACA but blaming it for everything wrong in medicine today makes us look like a bunch of old grumps yelling at clouds.
I guess the word “accelerated” the narrow networking is better. The old BASF commercial comes to mind. “We make a lot of the products you buy better” The ACA made the insurance you had worse.
I tweaked it.
Americans have been sold a bill of goods by the government. While the ACA may have genuinely helped some people, the majority of Americans have been hurt, especially the working poor and middle class. There is a disconnect in the idea that having health insurance guarantees someone will get health care.