Healthcare Daily Digest for Monday, 11 March: More Questions Than Answers in Healthcare Reform

Well, this isn’t a good sign: “As health care reform unfolds in the United States, people associated with the industry still have unanswered questions.

The article describes a recent Q&A hosted by the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association Indiana Chapter. As it turned out, though, there were more Qs than As. “A lot of us in this room have no idea how the ACA (Affordable Care Act) affects us.” That’s how moderator Todd Vare started the discussion.

That article is of a piece with this one: “Want to Help Fix Health Care? Start by Watching a Movie Tonight,” where HuffPo contributor Wendell Potter reviews “Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare.” Potter brings up a returning refrain: “Even though [the Affordable Healthcare Act] does much good, it doesn’t address many of the structural problems that make our system unique, but not in a good way. So even though millions more Americans will have access to care when Obamacare is fully implemented, the question is, access to what?”

Should healthcare reform be this difficult? Is there a way we could/should have been doing this that isn’t so locked into partisan bickering? At what point did things go wrong? I don’t have any answers. I just have a lot more questions — much like Todd.

Monday headlines:

Nancy Pelosi on Raising the Medicare Age: “It’s a trophy, it’s a scalp, but it’s not a solution.”

Got Time This Week?: The Motles Fool has three healthcare events you shouldn’t miss.

Someone’s Not a Fan of the Free Market: “Why would consumers need protections in the market for healthcare insurance? The best approach, say the insurance companies, is to allow the free market to work. They say competition will result in only good insurance policies being purchased through the exchange. What malarkey! The healthcare insurance market under the Affordable Care Act will not be a free market. Everyone is required to buy healthcare insurance so the demand is not set by the marketplace.”

Another Look at the Time Magazine Article: “In a penetrating, systemic, and long (36 pages) look at medical care, US-style, for Time magazine, with tale after tale of the financial miseries befalling the system’s victims, with number after number bolstering his analysis, Brill zooms in on the nation’s unrealistic and destructive healthcare costs–why they exist and persist.”