Obamacare, or as it’s more formally known, the Affordable Care Act, continues to help Americans afford healthcare in many ways. According to new data, around $12 billion has been saved due to a 17 percent drop in the rate of those injured or made ill while staying in the hospital. This is not entirely because of Obamacare, but the ACA played a role in dropping hospital re-admissions.
[Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell] touted the ways that the Obama administration has tried to make costs and quality information more transparent and to expand the use of electronic health information, all in an effort to “bolster clinical decision-making. . . .Burwell said the progress in patient safety was helping to move the country away from a healthcare system which ‘simply did not make sense.
‘We waited until patients got sick in order to treat them, rather than focusing on prevention. Our payment models incentivized volume rather than value,’ she said.
The Department of Health and Human Services is continuing to reduce the number of preventable injuries and illnesses sustained or contracted in hospitals. New safety standards, transparency, and disease prevention incentives will all help.
The drop in preventable illnesses in hospitals comes on top of news from last month regarding a Gallup poll which revealed most people are more than happy with healthcare plans from the exchange, as I reported then:
74 percent of Americans insured through the exchanges rate their quality of healthcare as ‘good’ or ‘excellent. 71 percent said the same thing about the coverage itself. A full three quarters are satisfied with the cost, and furthermore, 68 percent plan to renew the same policy, with another seven percent planning to get a new policy through the exchanges.
Of course, the reality of healthcare reform will not probably be accepted for a long time to come. While there are political points to be gained by muddying the waters, conservatives will continue to attack, manipulate, and outright lie in order to pander to constituents that bought their previous lies.
Many of the real issues with Obamacare come from over-complication. It would be simpler, and far cheaper as a nation, to cut out the insurance middlemen and concentrate on healing people. Healthcare is a human right.
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