ACA Slows Growth in Health Costs

ACA Slows Growth in Health Costs
Maddow Blog | November 20, 2013

The ACA Summarized

A nice summary of what the Affordable Care Act is . . . and isn’t.

ObamaCare In Plain English: What It Means for You
AddictingInfo.org | March 23, 2013

Some Common-Sense Ideas on Moving Forward

This article discusses some of the current problems with the Affordable Care Act and how we might move forward. My top two priorities would be to (1) cover those individuals who were “missed” when many Republican governors refused to expand Medicaid in their states; and (2) fix the out-of-network charges that patients incur through no fault of their own (and often without knowledge of the situation until it’s too late).

Driving a New Bargain on Health Care
New York Times | October 19, 2013

A companion piece explains with problems with out-of-network charges in more detail.

Out of Network, Not By Choice, and Facing Huge Health Bills
New York Times | October 18, 2013

What, Exactly, Is the Affordable Care Act Supposed To Do for Us?

There’s more to the Affordable Care Act than just the individual mandate and the uninsured.

Obamacare—The Rest of the the Story
New York Times Op-Ed | October 13, 2013

‘Chief of Explaining Things’ at It Again, Thankfully

Thanks to his obvious skill at explaining ideas clearly, the White House asked former president Bill Clinton to talk about the Affordable Care Act (ACA)  in an attempt to get the message out to the general public. So Clinton made the economic case for implementing and improving the ACA on Wednesday morning at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Personally, I'd love to see Clinton do a series of one- or two-minute public-service announcements on the most important aspects of the ACA. Actually, it would be great if other celebrities joined in.


Clinton’s Simple Case For Obamacare: ‘It’s Better Than The Current System’
The National Memo | September 4, 2013

Aetna‘s “Our Healthy” Campaign

Aetna, one of the largest health insurance companies in the U.S., launched a new marketing campaign—“Our Healthy”—today, which highlights the company’s goal of cutting billions of dollars of expenditures through so-called Big Data, electronic health records, and other technologies as well as encouraging better coordination among healthcare providers.

According to the Institute of Medicine‘s The Healthcare Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes (2011), the healthcare system wastes $760 billion dollars a year as a result of consumer fraud, unnecessary procedures, and excessive administrative costs. Aetna‘s goal is to bring human resources professionals, health care providers, policy maker, and even consumers together to try to reduce these wasteful expenses.

With Change Coming, Aetna Targets Employers
The New York Times | September 3, 2013

Dialysis Center Profits vs. Universal Healthcare

Let me see if I‘ve got this straight: we can overpay dialysis centers for drugs patients don‘t need—and actually harm them in many instances—because their lobby is super powerful, but we shouldn‘t have healthcare for all? <scratching head>
 

House Bid to Undo Dialysis Cuts Show Lobbyists‘ Muscle

The New York Times | August 28, 2013