{"id":68,"date":"2013-09-13T09:06:31","date_gmt":"2013-09-13T14:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leiferreport.com\/?p=68"},"modified":"2013-09-13T09:06:31","modified_gmt":"2013-09-13T14:06:31","slug":"obamacare-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/?p=68","title":{"rendered":"Obamacare: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"iStock_000020797779Medium\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When my friends ask me to translate the 2,000+ pages of legislation constituting the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, into a sound-byte, I stammer and stutter looking for where to begin. In the end, I tell them\u00a0about the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.<\/p>\n

The good news is that ACA eliminates some reprehensible insurance practices of the past. No longer are people uninsurable due to pre-existing conditions. Gone, too, are lifetime limits covering insured, health care expenditures. Plus, subsidies\/stipends and new qualifications for Medicaid should make it far easier for tens of millions of Americans to access the system (assuming we have an\u00a0adequate supply of physicians).\u00a0\u00a0Achieving this level of expanded access is a major accomplishment. The only problem is that it is widening the funnel to let more people into a highly dysfunctional health care system.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s \u201cbad\u201d about Obamacare is its fundamental failure to address the core dysfunction rife within American medicine. The American health care system is astonishingly expensive, remarkably variable in quality, and incapable of stemming the rising tide of chronic illness in our population. Greed is endemic in medicine, and the prices charged\u00a0for health\u00a0care services are incomprehensible to consumers.<\/p>\n

Journalists are now\u00a0latching onto the issue of cost, as illustrated in a New York Times<\/em>\u00a0article entitled: \u201cHow to Charge $546 for Six Liters of Saltwater<\/a>,\u201d as well as in Steven Brill’s\u00a0comprehensive expos\u00e9,\u00a0“Bitter Pill<\/a>,” that appeared earlier this year\u00a0in Time Magazine.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0These articles are likely to\u00a0resonate increasingly\u00a0with consumers who have to pony-up hard-earned dollars to cover higher deductibles and co-pays.<\/p>\n

The \u201cugly\u201d of Obamacare\u00a0is the way we, as a society, have responded to the new law. Yes, it is fundamentally flawed, but<\/span> it does contain meaningful social reform. We need to see it for what it is \u2013 not through the\u00a0distorted lens of political polarization. We can then have an intelligent discussion\u00a0about what problems Obamacare will solve; what new problems it may create; and what additional reformation needs to occur to stem the rising cost of health care while improving its quality, safety, and accessibility.<\/p>\n

If ever there was a time for an objective debate about the next steps in reforming our $2.7 trillion health care system, it is now!<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Please let me know your thoughts via e-mail: johnleifer@aol.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When my friends ask me to translate the 2,000+ pages of legislation constituting the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, into a sound-byte, I stammer and stutter looking for where to begin. In the end, I tell them\u00a0about the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The good news is that ACA eliminates some reprehensible insurance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[29,36,71,94],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthcare","category-healthcare-reform","tag-aca","tag-affordable-care-act","tag-healthcare-costs","tag-obamacare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}