Healthcare Economics
In my last post I commented on some
of what I feel are negative aspects of current healthcare legislation. To be fair, in this post I would like to point out a few attributes
that can be construed as positive from my point of view as a hospital employee.
For example, Obamacare requires people to have
insurance or pay a tax. While many
people would see this as negative because they now have to pay money for
insurance they do not feel they need, healthcare organizations see this as a positive. This is because the number of people that are
uninsured has declined. This should in
turn increase the demand for healthcare because more people will have coverage. Hypothetically, having coverage should reduce
the price people will have to pay for healthcare and reduce some of the risk
hospitals face with collecting payment for services.
Another up-side to Obamacare is the
pay for performance measures. As
hospitals improve their quality they are reimbursed more from the federal
government and if a hospitals quality declines they are reimbursed less. This is a great incentive for hospitals to
improve their quality which leads to better care for patients. Economically this means that hospitals can
increase the amount they are being paid by increasing quality. Thus there will be a greater supply of
quality services and a smaller supply of inferior services.
There are a few other positive
points related to Obamacare. I have
listed the two I feel are most beneficial to the hospital I work at. However I still believe the bad outweighs the
good. Following are two links to
articles that shed greater light on this subject.
1 comment:
Joey: 94/100 (you mean hospital's not hospitals)
As a healthcare professional, I'm surprised you missed the big reason healthcare providers wanted Obamacare. In the past, they've had big problems collecting for services rendered from people who don't have insurance. They want those more people signed up for programs that make sure the provider gets paid.
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