I have long wondered why Republicans are so vehemently opposed to affordable health care, so I was interested to read the commentary by John Nolte, M.D.
They don’t say they oppose it, of course, they simply do all they can to block or undercut it. They’ve been telling us for years that they can improve on the Affordable Care Act, and the current President said four years ago that he, personally, will replace it with something better. Only problem is that he hasn’t, nor has his party come up anything. Now, Dr. Nolte assures us that “we can get rid of” the highly popular ACA, as if that’s something we all want. So I plowed through his essay to try to understand his logic. Here’s a brief summary of his points:
1. President Barack Obama assured us that the new law would allow patients to keep their current doctors. (This is true. What Mr. Obama did not say, and probably didn’t understand at the time, was that insurance companies and health care providers would drop patients if they felt they couldn’t maintain their accustomed profit margins).
2. The ACA didn’t drive down health care costs, but instead insurance premiums have increased. What Dr. Nolte fails to mention is that the rate of increase slowed. More importantly, he didn’t address the reasons for those increases, which largely are related to dramatic increases in fees charged by practitioners, clinics and hospitals.
3. Medicaid expansion is (according to Dr. Nolte) “a complete nightmare” because it is providing health care access to more people. Apparently the doctor thinks that’s a bad thing.
4. The ACA and its programs “have failed us at every turn…” Huh? He should tell the more than 15 million Americans who are happy to have it.
Dr. Nolte is correct that consumers deserve more personalized care but, let’s face it, we don’t have it because of business decisions made by individual practitioners and the corporate owners of clinics and hospitals.
He proposes legislative fixes intended to enable “free-market” reforms. Unfortunately, we know that America’s free-market health industry has consistently produced poorer outcomes at dramatically higher costs than many countries with publicly funded health care, even before the ACA.
The reasons America’s and Alaska’s health care costs are highest in the world and rapidly increasing — despite mediocre-at-best results — are many. But one stands out as indisputable — extremely generous personal income expectations of many practitioners and corporate owners. I support Dr. Nolte’s call for more pricing transparency so that patients will know what they will be charged. I assume he posts his fees for prospective customers to compare before giving him their business. Right?
Terry Johnson
Anchorage
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