The rising cost of health insurance coverage has imposed a heavy burden on our nation. Over the past decade, insurance premiums for working families have grown three times faster than have wages. Small businesses have seen health care become one of their biggest operating expenses. And rising state and federal spending on health programs has crowded out critical investments in better schools, new roads and other areas.
If health care costs continue to rise unchecked, they will threaten America’s ability to compete and will become unaffordable for most families. One of the major reasons we passed the Affordable Care Act was to bring down costs, something the health care law does in three ways: by increasing insurance-market competition, assisting those who can’t afford coverage, and tackling the underlying cost of medical care.
The 2010 reform law gives Americans a truly competitive health insurance market. In the past, insurers could get away with huge premium hikes because there was little transparency or accountability. People saw their insurance rates rise but had little way of knowing whether the increase was justified. In a market where consumers had little information, prices and insurance-company profits soared.
The Affordable Care Act is putting consumers back in charge with two new rules that shine much-needed light on the health insurance market. The first requires insurers to justify premium increases of more than 10 percent and to post that information online. The second is the “80-20 rule,” which requires insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on health care, rather than on advertising or executive pay. If they don’t, you get a rebate. Together, these changes are creating a health insurance market where premiums stay in check and Americans get their money’s worth .
The Affordable Care Act also makes health plans more affordable for small businesses and individuals by creating a marketplace of state-based insurance exchanges. In this new marketplace, consumers will be able to see all their options in one place. Health plans with similar benefits will be compared on an “apples to apples” basis, creating a new level of competition that drives down costs even further. And under the law, Americans with low incomes will be eligible for tax credits to make sure they can afford coverage. Insurers will also be prohibited from using “pre-existing conditions” to lock people out of the market.
But helping individuals and small businesses afford health insurance is only part of the answer. All Americans with health coverage, whether they receive it directly or through their employer, have faced unchecked increases for many years because of rapid growth in the underlying cost of care. The Affordable Care Act gives us tools to reduce costs by promoting better health and providing better care, especially in Medicare and Medicaid, which can be tremendous forces for positive change across the entire health care system.
The law emphasizes prevention because we know it is far less expensive to prevent disease than to treat it. Under the Affordable Care Act, many preventive services are available without cost-sharing so patients avoid chronic conditions and the painful and costly complications they often lead to.
In addition, several initiatives in the health care law are designed to support physicians, hospitals and other providers in their lifesaving work. For example, the Partnership for Patients is a nationwide effort to reduce patient infections and hospital readmissions. Together with hospitals and clinics, we are helping to share and replicate the most significant improvements that some of the country’s best hospitals have already achieved. Simple activities such as hand-washing and discharge planning, done systematically, can save lives and money. By helping these innovations spread, the Partnership for Patients alone could reduce costs to Medicare by $50 billion in the next 10 years.
The health care law gives us dozens of tools to improve chronic-disease management, coordinate care among multiple providers and foster innovation. Experts who have studied the law, from the Medicare trustees to the independent Congressional Budget Office, agree that it will put the brakes on skyrocketing Medicare costs. And last January, 272 of America’s top economists wrote to the House Budget Committee that the ACA “contains essentially every cost-containment provision policy analysts have considered effective in reducing the rate of medical spending.”
It won’t be easy and it won’t happen overnight. But at a time when some claim that our only options are to allow health care costs to continue to skyrocket or to make some of the most dramatic cuts to our health care programs ever proposed, the Affordable Care Act provides a better way forward.
Kathleen Sebelius is U.S. secretary of health and human services.
If everything Kathleen Sebelius says in this article is true, why have 1,200 waivers been granted already? Seems that businesses are not that impressed with the Obama non-health care act! I heard a neurosurgeon recently state that he went to a conference where it was said that anyone over 60 entering the ER with a neurological problem would simply be given “comfort care” and that a panel of non-physicians would have to decide whether these “elderly” people should be treated and that the patients would now be called “units,” which certainly puts them on a very impersonal basis.
Must have been a Bachman/Palin supporter.
Bunk. Total, political, progressive-left hogwash.
Speaking of hogwash. Address the issues, please one by one. And you critics of ACA aren’t political?
ACA is a government takeover of the health care system. It’s goal is to eliminate the free market system that worked so well before the government got their regulation machine into high gear. It is unconstitutional and needs to be repealed. It’s an issue of American survival, not politics.
The free market health system we have DOES NOT WORK!! Except for the CEO’s of health care corporations who are making billions off the rest of us, while delivering the most inefficient, expensive product possible.
Single Payer Please.
It doesn’t work primarily because of government intrusion and regulations.
Want to reduce the cost of healthcare? Easy, implement a national universal healthcare system. How would this save money?
It removes profit from healthcare.
It eliminates redundant healthcare providers such as the VA, Medicaid, Medicare, and all the local agencies that assist the poor looking for healthcare.
It greatly reduces use of the hospital emergency room as primary care provider.
People who have regular healthcare are healthier.
There would be a reduction in the amount of high cost care for people who end up being seriously ill when early intervention would have avoided such serious consequences.
Healthy people can work and thus make their contribution.
People who are not living in poverty because of their medical bills are now able to spend this same money on their future such as investing in an education. Education = good jobs = more tax dollars. The net result is a person who contributes more and uses less.
I can hear the screaming now, that’s socialized medicine! That and the inevitable negative evaluation of the Canadian healthcare system. First let me strenuously say that such comparisons are right wing propaganda using cheap rhetoric that is based in lies. I have many Canadian relatives and they ALL favor the Canadian system. People do not die for a lack of treatment nor for a lack of medicine in Canada. Yes, elective procedures are not covered so you must pay to have your warts removed. Big deal! At least you are not turned out by the hospital after you are stabilized. This can, and does, happen in the US. Yes the hospital is required to stabilize you but forget those long term cancer treatments. You’ve been told to go home and die. Furthermore, the Canadian system actually costs their citizens less than our system does. The total tax burden for providing medical care to Canadian citizens is less than our insurance premiums never mind when you add in the cost of all the aforementioned agencies who (attempt to) make up for the deficiencies of the American system. Now here’s the kicker. Canadians live longer than their American counterparts. In fact, 20 out of 25 countries with the longest life expectancy have universal healthcare. Imagine that! The US ranks # 36 for life expectancy. Imagine that! Finally I would say to those who demand to pay for healthcare insurance that they can still do so. Yes they should still be required contribute to a universal healthcare costs however, should they desire to, they can still give their money to profit driven insurance companies. Maybe to cover those elective procedures that universal healthcare would not cover. The time for universal healthcare in the United States has come. Let us not delay it’s implementation.
Excellent description and defence of the ACA.
The business community cooks their books for one. Why not cook the books for a better health care system? Taiwan has done it. People keep talking cost to business. If a 60 billion dollar fraud scheme was uncovered in our current health care system (politics aside- this fraud has gone on for decades) why can’t an honest and legitimate system be but in place? Money! Take the lobbyists and profits out of the health system. Reward hospitals, preventive health practitioners, hell your fitness trainer, with an alternative currency system that isn’t ambiguous. Our current economy and banking system doesn’t punish for fraud or unethical transactions. It rewards interest rates and vulture lending. How is that a healthy basis for a health care system? It will never happen in a system that applauds usury. Hospitals and drug companies should be non-profit. The multi-billion dollar fraud that is our drug companies is in fact a pay off network with no promise for the patient of getting better or having help preventing further complications.
In 2002:
“The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy states that conventional medicine is not addressing chronic illness and diseases (WHCCAM 2002). The focus has been on interventions and not wellness and health promotions that have been left to the individual. The Commission says the focus should be on physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional aspects of disease prevention, which are not being adequately addressed by orthodox Western Medicine.”
We are getting to the point where supercomputers are on everyone’s desks and we can’t do the math?
I’ve already had a health issue that has left me with the inability to pay my debts, buy a house, or even think about starting a family. And yet if I were healthy and earned more money, I’d be an active contributor to a medical pyramid scheme.