Obamacare Accelerated

President Obama is eager to get his health plan rolling. While certain aspects of the plan – like children up to age 26 being able to be covered under their parents’ plan – taking effect this year, other parts of the law will not make it into practice until well after the President’s first term is over, which could augur poorly for chances of re-election.

One aspect of the law involves state led discount health care to provide competitive rates to allow people to choose the best discount medical plan. To get the ball rolling, the President has proposed creating an Independent Payment Advisory Board for controlling Medicare spending.

The goal would be to limit how much money is spent on insuring an increasingly aging population, with what is projected to be an unsustainable national debt. Medicare and other forms of discount health care would be effectively run by the Board, which would consist of 15 members who hold six year terms. Unlike the current Medicare Board, this panel would be able to implement its decisions, unless Congress rejects them within 30 days. The president could also veto the solution, and a 2/3 vote in Congress could override that veto.

In any event, this plan to improve discount medical plan efficiency will take time to implement, despite President Obama’s attempts at immediacy.

Luring Primary Care Physicians

With the new health care bill enacted, researchers speculate that the U.S. will soon experience a shortage of doctors. The shortage will come mostly in the areas of general practitioners and primary care doctors, who are necessary for treating those with general medical health plans. . A shortage of doctors could mean longer wait times and even more limited access to health care. The new health care bill is supposed to encourage applicants to these areas of medicine by adding a 10% Medicare boost to their salaries.

While last year four new medical schools enrolled nearly 200 students and twelve existing med schools added 150 collective spots, the problem comes from a shortage of residencies. The U.S. has 954,000 doctors today, and 110,000 residency positions according to the AAMC . Medicare pays hospitals to train and pay these residents. In 1997, however, Congress enacted a cap on subsidies for residents. A change on this cap didn’t find its way into the new health care bill, unfortunately. But the law does address the issue by moving the nation’s many unfilled residency spots to primary care residencies.

The ultimate goal is to lure medical students away from the glamour of specialties. Primary care physicians will be increasingly necessary for the government’s medical health plans and discount health care.

More Medical Doctors Move Away From Private Practice

Today, more young doctors are shying away from opening private practices due to rising costs and the added work of running their own businesses. Instead they are moving to hospitals to employ them for salaried wages.

This means that much of the patient doctor relationship has, and will continue to erode, but ideally, patients will see better discount health care as records move seamlessly within a hospital.

Many a health discount plan help to give medical health plans to people who could not afford them. Rising insurance premiums controlled by the government often create monopolies in the health insurance industry. The newly passed legislation will likely reduce costs on discount health care, but will also encourage more doctors to move to hospitals and away from private practices.

Because many specialty surgeons and private practitioners have to face rising insurance premiums for their patients, they do not see much of the money they charge; healthcare uninsured makes it so that having a private practice does not benefit them. Plus, many private health insurance providers cut reimbursements to specialty doctors.

Quality will improve for the general health discount plan, and costs will lower, but for doctors,
being the days of being their own bosses are limited.

Health Care Bill Passes!

The passage of the health care bill affords more Americans the chance to have a cheap health care plan. Whereas before, many people were unqualified for medical health plans, now they cannot be denied and are eligible for all kinds of medical health plans. Previously, discount health care was the closest these people could come to getting the help they needed.

Within a few months such changes as the rejection of lifetime limits on coverage and children’s ability to stay on their parent’s healthcare until they are 26 will take effect.

Unfortunately the bill was unanimously voted against by Republicans, and that means that a divided house will continue to sit and debate when the bill goes to the Senate later this week. Democrats earned the leverage they needed by noting that none of the bill’s monies will go to abortions, which convinced key voters to vote ‘aye.’

Now that healthcare uninsured is made possible, the medical health plans already in effect will become even fairer and more well rounded. President Obama said amidst predictions that his presidency will fail and the Congress will fall to the Republicans that this will, “prove a victory for common sense.”