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Uncle Sam is not doing so well.
Obamacare never dropped obesity levels, as it was promised by the administration back when they were pushing for the bill. Instead, the program to increase healthcare availability has been increasing the money spent. And the long term effects promised are yet to be seen. This is, apparently, due to one major flaw.
Logical as it may sound, the reasoning behind the bill that ensured preemptive healthcare for close to nine million people is faulty, to say the least. However noble the cause of bringing insurance to people who could not afford it prior to the law, it’s proving a measure more and more unsustainable. That’s because of some very basic assumptions that turned out to be plain wrong, as many news outlets are pointing out now. Among them, the New York Times.
President Obama argued back in 2009 that there is a need for more preventive healthcare. No argues here. That is the normal direction for a society which wishes to overcome health threats. The President also said that by increasing the number of people who receive insurance, there will be, in the long run, a lower need for healthcare as people will turn up healthier due to prevention.
This has proven untrue. New studies are showing that people who receive health insurance are more likely to go to the doctor; twice as often as they would have had they hone had it. This is all along the lines of: the more money you have, the more money you spend. This theory is backed by economics professor Amy Finkelstein of the MIT.
Finkelstein had led a study on the state of Oregon which looked at how people were being given Medicaid through state insurance. They found that, the demand being too high, the result was essentially a lottery. Some got insurance, while others did not. Moreover. Those who did get insurance, ended up spending more money on health services than those who never got it. This is just one of the worrying studies on the matter.
This latest uproar has been started on the basis of last week’s launching of the annual report of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. The data on 2014 not being fully gathered, the report only managed to give an estimate on the increase in health-care spending that year.
However, the number looks pretty bad. It’s 5.5%. Still, not as bad as prior to the Great Recession, but bad enough to raise a warning sign. The three major issues are the aging population, the improving economy which prompts more people to demand health services, as well as the Obamacare expansion of insurance coverage.
These three issues must be tackled and fast if the country is to further sustain an affordable and efficient healthcare system.
Image source: huffpost.com
