Obama and the Future of Healthcare

Americans across the country watched Barack Obama being sworn in on January 20th as President with hope and jubilation in their hearts. Many healthcare providers and organizations see the reforms to healthcare that he promised in his campaign as long overdue. Indeed, Obama let it be known in his inaugural speech that “We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise healthcare’s quality and lower its costs.”

While that sentence sounds politically vague, the $100 billion that he has earmarked for immediate investment in healthcare is anything but. Most of that will be going to upgrade the nation’s healthcare information systems, allowing the government to consolidate badly needed data on who needs what coverage where. The rest will go towards Medicaid. According to promises he made in his election campaign, it won’t stop there either. Obama is focused on healthcare as a key to America’s economic recovery. Obama has stated that healthcare costs must come down as the quality goes up – a seemingly unreachable goal, but one that has indeed been reached by many European countries with a sane mixture of private and publicly funded healthcare. Physicians in England are paid just as much as their counterparts in the US – the catch is, healthcare in England is free. It is possible because other countries have done it successfully.

The difference for the average HMO and healthcare practice is where the bills are submitted to and how much they can charge out. As you may already know, most of what many consumers call “bill padding” is necessary to protect against insurance company payment practices which frequently leave the medical providers holding the bag. Obama’s fair and balanced approach will take into account the input of healthcare providers when formulating his new healthcare plans, unlike the insurance providers who are simply out for their own corporate interests.

In the last decade, healthcare insurance premiums have risen at four times the rate of inflation. While a lot of that may be explained through malpractice suits or the rising costs of providing healthcare, four times the rate of inflation is a figure that we can all agree is a bit steep. For most American families healthcare premiums and costs now equal the cost of payments on two cars. 4.1 million people have lost their employer-paid healthcare plans and 2 million of those people have not yet found a suitable replacement. In Obama’s America, over 2 million people will not be allowed to slip through the cracks.

Obama has also promised to establish a Federal Health Board, that will “reduce or deny payment for new drugs and procedures that aren’t as effective as current ones.” In this way drug companies will be discouraged from coming up with new products simply for the sake of having a new product, a practice which creates a massive time vacuum for doctors who must keep up with all of these new drugs. Medicaid will also be relieved of the burden of paying for expensive, newer drugs that people don’t need. HMO’s do have to worry about the “procedures that aren’t as effective as current ones” bit of that speech but again, through our professional associations our voices will be heard in government, ensuring a fair shake for both healthcare organizations and the consumer.

If the campaign promises hold true, which it looks like they may from Obama’s actions within the first few days of being President, there will be many sweeping and exciting changes to the world of healthcare. Make sure that your organization is ready!

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