Affordable Care Act Drives Cost Increases : Quality Decreases

This is just another nail the coffin of Affordable Care Act that was crammed down all of our throats by the progressive socialists in the dead of night. Not one Republican voted for this nightmare that will, when full implemented,actually destroy our health care, and not just for the 30 million new participants, but for everyone.

No one even read the bill before they rammed it through - Pelosi said it has to be "passed to find out what's in it". Socialist Democrats at their best.

But is the Affordable Care Act really about health care? Really? Or is it designed to 'level' the playing field so that the 90% of the population that has health care give up their policies so that the 10% that doesn't want or need or care about health care, can get the care they want and not have to pay for it? Destroy the entire system to make sure 10% of the population is covered, and bring another huge number of dependent individuals under the wing of progressive socialist control.

Interesting? Could a political party be willing to destroy the countries entire health care system just to get another few million voters? Would progressive socialist liberal Democrats do this? - ah, it's done! Who voted for this in November? The 'low information' voter or the mentally deranged voter?

Why ObamaCare's Health Care Cost Controls Won't Work
January 4, 2013
Source: Peter Suderman, "Why ObamaCare's Health Care Cost Controls Won't Work," Reason Magazine, December 13, 2012.

As Congress comes together to further discuss long-term debt reduction strategies, lawmakers on the left are unwilling to tackle the issue that matters the most: entitlement spending. In particular, many prominent Democrats have argued against any reductions to Medicare, says Peter Suderman, a senior editor at Reason magazine.

• Many opponents of cutting Medicare argue that health care cost control measures that have been passed in recent years -- such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) -- are yet to be implemented and evaluated fully.
• One measure in the ACA creates financial incentives for hospitals to avoid preventable readmissions.
• Another, called Value Based Purchasing, pays more to hospitals that perform better on certain quality metrics.

Both reforms stem from the idea that reducing health care costs must come from changing the way the government pays for health care. With regard to financial incentives, there is little evidence that pay-for-performance reduces overall health costs.

• In one study, there was a short-term increase in the quality of care a hospital offered but it disappeared after five years.
• Another study looked at the 30-day mortality rates in hospitals that participated in the quality incentive demonstration project and found no difference between participating hospitals and those that didn't participate.
• Similarly, a pay-for-performance pilot program launched in Medicaid found no quality improvement.

There is also little evidence that Value Based Purchasing will yield savings. One study found that the program has a small impact on hospital payments that is not enough to incentivize better care or a reduction in costs.

Another touted cost-saving measure in the ACA is the Medicare Shared Saving Program. This program was created to provide bonuses to more care groups that are more cost-efficient. However, the projected savings would actually be 1 percent or less.

The ACA is not the only health care cost control measure put in place by the Obama administration. The 2009 stimulus bill gave $30 billion to incentivize hospitals to adopt new information technology systems. But like other cost control measures, this ended up costing taxpayers about $1 billion a year more because hospitals billed Medicare more.