Hospitals and Drug Makers Nothing to Fear?

I came across an interesting article in the NYT that actually said “Hospitals, Drug Makers, and Physicians have nothing to fear [about healthcare reform]” The claim by analysts is that all the soon to be newly insured patients are being treated for free by hospitals. With the new reform a lot of the uninsured will either opt for Medicaid or a national plan providing the hospital with a payer source they right now do not have for these patients. But isn’t this just the beginning? In order to cut healthcare costs the CBO has clearly made it’s point that ACO’s and bundled payments (which hurt hospital revenue by not paying for readmitted patients within 30 days) is really the only way to see healthcare costs cut at the level they need to be cut to stop the bleeding. So is having more Medicaid and insured patients really of benefit to the hospitals? I guess we’ll see what the trade-off is soon enough.

The article then went on to say that physicians would benefit because all the newly insured patients would need physician services. I agree. I think the physicians will probably be okay. I have spoken to about 20 physicians in the last 2 months and asked them if they were feeling secure. The response was overwhelmingly no. The physicians I have spoken with say until Congress takes the cuts proposed for physicians under Medicare off the table, no physician is going to sleep easy. I have seen first hand over the last year more and more physicians banding together, expanding and diversifying their practices and business models to offset any kind of future cuts.

The third group that was supposed to see the most downside may not be seeing any at all according to the NYT article. Pharmaceutical drug makers stand to gain significantly from 32 million newly insured patients. Of course they do, that’s 32 million more patients seeing physicians to write 10’s of billions of dollars worth of new prescriptions. The drug makers may just be the biggest proponents and winners of them all! Certainly ironic since they were supposed to see the most downside from new reform.

One thing is for certain, healthcare reform even though passed, is uncertain. But it’s getting to be an exciting ride.

Please see link below for the article this post is making reference to:

In HealthReform, Boons for Hospitals and Drug Makers-NYT

Reverse Your Outlook On Healthcare

A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite. This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video and it is brilliant. Make sure you read as well as listen…forward and backward.

This is a video that was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled “u @ 50″ by AARP. This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause. So simple and yet so brilliant. Take a minute and watch it. Then apply the concept to healthcare reform? Enjoy!