Today’s OpEds: Eliminating Health Care Waste, Empowering Consumers To Save Money, Trouble Finding A Medicare Doctor, The Dangers Of Overtreatment
Making The Health Care Reform Law Work Roll Call
When Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act this March, it took a health insurance system that was locked in a decades-long spiral of rising costs and shrinking security and set it on a new course. The new law contains a series of long-overdue reforms that will put consumers - not insurance companies - in charge of their health care (Kathleen Sebelius, 6/21).
The Hidden Cost Of Health Care Cost Control The Fiscal Times
Baseline projections showed health care soaring to 19 percent by the end of this decade (it's already about 17 percent); more than 25 percent of all economic activity sometime during the next decade; and 34 percent by 2040. ... Unless the nation is willing to let its government become totally preoccupied with providing health care, half a point of GDP in cost reductions simply isn't going to get the job done (Merrill Goozner, 6/22).
Reforming Health Care Costs The [Charleston, S.C.] Post and Courier
Rising health care costs represent the largest threat to the nation's fiscal solvency, and unfortunately, Obamacare does little to change that. But empowering consumers can cut costs. It is time to try a different approach (6/22).
How to Eliminate Health Care Waste Roll Call
We believe that by putting five proven strategies into effect to address the worst of those bad habits, the health care industry can cut its costs by 5 percent a year, an achievement that over a 10-year period would save the nation an impressive $3.6 trillion (Robert Kelley and Ray Fabius, 6/21).
Seniors Are Losing Access to Medicare Docs AOL News
When lawmakers said the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would cut the deficit by $143 billion over the next decade, what they left out was the fact that these savings depended on deep cuts in payments to doctors treating Medicare -- cuts so deep they'd severely limit seniors' access to doctors (Dr. C.L. Gray, 6/22).
Government's Dance On Medicaid The Virginia Pilot
The blob of new government spending is unlovely to behold in its entirety. But without it jobless men and women would lose benefits they depend on to pay for rent and groceries as they continue their search for work. Low-income elderly and disabled people may lose access to medical care (6/22).
Too Much Health Care A Problem, Too The [Fort Myers, Florida] News Press
More medical care won't necessarily make you healthier; it could even make you sicker (6/21).