ACA

See the following -

CHIME Asks ONC to Rethink NwHIN

Jeff Smith | Healthcare Informatics | July 5, 2012

CHIME submitted comments this week to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, responding to the agency’s vision for nationwide health information exchange.  ONC officials in May released a Request for Information (RFI) that sought feedback on how to establish a governance mechanism for the nationwide health information network (NwHIN). Read More »

Federal CTO Todd Park Taps the Private Sector to Drive Innovation

Joseph Marks | NextGov | July 27, 2012

In mid-2010, the already frenetic Todd Park was in overdrive. President Obama had just signed the Affordable Care Act into law, the most significant reform of the American health care system since Medicare. It was Park’s job to figure out how government could use technology to make the law’s implementation as smooth and fruitful as possible. Read More »

Halamka: Advice to the New National Coordinator

Karen DeSalvo started as the new National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology on January 13, 2014.  After my brief discussion with her last week, I can already tell she's a good listener, aware of the issues, and is passionate about using healthcare IT as a tool to improve population health...What advice would I give her, given the current state of healthcare IT stakeholders?

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Health Care (Insurance) Reform Upheld, but Concentration and Abuse of Power Remain Largely Unaddressed

Roy M. Poses | Health Care Renewal | June 28, 2012

Numerous media reports say that the US Supreme Court has upheld the massive US health care "reform" law...In my humble opinion, the law will likely increase acess to commercial health care insurance, although will likely not reduce the expense of such insurance, or address the misbehavior of many large insurance companies... Read More »

Health Care Costs Traced to Data and Communication Failures

Andy Oram | EMR & EMH | April 12, 2016

Most of us know about the insidious role of health care costs in holding down wages, in the fight by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker over pensions that tore the country apart, in crippling small businesses, and in narrowing our choice of health care providers. Not all realize, though, that the crisis is leaching through the health care industry as well, causing hospitals to fail, insurers to push costs onto subscribers and abandon the exchanges where low-income people get their insurance, co-ops to close, and governments to throw people off of subsidized care, threatening the very universal coverage that the ACA aimed to achieve. Lessons from a ground-breaking book by T.R. Reid, The Healing of America, suggests that we’re undergoing a painful transition that every country has traversed to achieve a rational health care system...

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Health Care, Stop Using: Insurance, Market, and Quality (Part 1 of 2)

Andy Oram | EMR & HIPAA | August 22, 2016

The health care insurance industry looks like no other insuranceAndy Oram
industry in the world. When we think of insurance, we think of paying semi-annually into a fund we hope we never need to use. But perhaps every twenty years or so, we suffer damage to our car, our house, or our business, and the insurance kicks in. That may have been true for healthcare 70 years ago, when you wouldn’t see the doctor unless you fell into a pit or came down with some illness they likely couldn’t cure anyway.
The insurance model is totally unsuited for health care today...

 

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Health IT Orthodoxy after the Supreme Court

John Loonsk | Government Health IT | July 2, 2012

The focus of ACA attention will turn to results or repeal. And while a different decision could have had ACA become a weight on HITECH and health information technology (HIT), the principally bi-partisan nature of the HIT agenda should now refocus attention almost exclusively on results for it. Read More »

In Rwanda, Health Care Coverage That Eludes the U.S.

Tina Rosenberg | New York Times | July 3, 2012

Last week’s Supreme Court decision upholding of the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law moves the United States closer to the goal of health coverage for all. All other developed countries have it. But so do some developing nations... Read More »

Is Today the Day When Obama Starts Explaining ACA’s Benefits to Americans?

Tom Sullivan | Government Health IT | June 28, 2012

Whether you agree with Obamacare or not, it’s quite clear that the current administration has done a rather lousy job spreading the word about its advantages – even tangible benefits that Americans already enjoy. Read More »

Judgment Day: Dr. Margaret Flowers on What Follows the Supreme Court Ruling on Healthcare

Laura Flanders | The Nation | June 27, 2012

Margaret Flowers, MD, is a pediatrician whose exasperation with the American healthcare system turned her into a single-payer activist. In 2009 she was arrested at the Senate Round Table on Health Insurance for attempting to speak on behalf of a single-payer plan when single-payer had been cut out of the conversation. Read More »

ObamaCare as Corporatists United: A Huge Bailout for Another Failing Industry

Clark Newhall | PNHP | June 29, 2012

The ideology that drives the Supreme Court, the political administration and the Congress is not Conservative or Liberal but can best be described as Corporatist. This is the ideology that affirms that “corporations are citizens, my friends.”  It is the ideology that drove the Roberts court to the odious Citizens United decision. It is the ideology behind a bailout for banks that are "too big to fail." And it is the ideology that allows Congress to pass a law like the ACA that is essentially written by a favored industry.

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Political Implications of the Supreme Court Decision on Health Reform

Brian Ahier | Government Health IT | July 2, 2012

Regardless of the facts about the benefits or costs of health reform, a majority of Americans still favor repeal of the legislation. Those numbers rose in the run up to the 2010 elections and helped provide the shellacking the President received in the mid-term elections.
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SCOTUS majority embraces individual mandate, ACA

Mary Mosquera | Government Health IT | June 28, 2012

The Supreme Court has ruled that it is constitutional to require that all Americans obtain health insurance coverage or pay a penalty, defying the expectations of many that the majority conservative leaning justices would strike it down.

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Tapping Big Data for Early Identification of Preventable Conditions

Roger Foster | Government Health IT | June 4, 2012

The cost to the U.S. healthcare system from preventable conditions and avoidable care has been estimated in the range of $25-50 billion annually. Preventable conditions are a significant component of the $600-850 billion surplus in healthcare spending ultimately increasing cost and decreasing the overall quality of public health.

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The Fiscal Consequences Of The Affordable Care Act

Charles Blahous | HealthAffairs Blog | April 20, 2012

The view that comprehensive health care reform must make a substantial positive contribution to repairing the federal fiscal outlook was one of the motivating principles underlying the March, 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The ACA as enacted falls well short of that standard and would significantly worsen the federal government’s fiscal position relative to previous law. Read More »