Starting Oct. 1, more than 1 million uninsured Kansans and Missourians will, for the first time, have full access to a computer-based health insurance marketplace at www.healthcare.gov. There they can see and compare qualified health plans and prices and perhaps obtain tax credits to pay for the coverage the law says almost all Americans must have by the end of the year. It's a critical part of the Affordable Care Act. It sounds simple enough. But local experts are nervous. The enrollment process, they say, will present the uninsured with a complicated blizzard of choices that can befuddle even those who have had insurance for years.
As Maryland health officials prepare for nationwide health reform, the goal is clear: enrolling the state's estimated 800,000 uninsured residents. But finding them is a challenge. There is no master list or map of the uninsured, who make up 14 percent of the state's population. And though census data can identify concentrations, including those in Baltimore City, Price George's County and the rural Eastern Shore, it doesn't provide detailed information about neighborhoods that should be targeted. To close that gap, officials are using upgraded electronic health records to develop maps highlighting where Marylanders overuse emergency rooms for care — one indicator of the uninsured — or where pockets of disease develop.
I visited cardiologist Eric Topol at the Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, California, one day this summer. He'd had a busy morning seeing patients and, by about noon, was claiming to have already saved the medical system tens of thousands of dollars using his iPhone and a pocket-sized ultrasound machine. Then he pointed to the stethoscope in his pocket and said he hasn't used it in three years. "I should just throw it out," he said. "This is basically a worthless icon of medicine." Topol is perhaps the most prominent advocate in the U.S. of how digital technology can lead to less expensive health care, and he invited me to see the savings in action.
If you meet someone who claims to know how health care reform is going to play out over the next year, hold on to your wallet. You're probably talking to a con artist. The advent of the Affordable Care Act means many states are scrambling to set up insurance exchanges, which are online marketplaces to shop for private insurance, while other states will rely on a federal exchange. This shuffle is taking place just as rules covering Medicaid eligibility are changing for millions of families, including about 92,000 in Wisconsin.
As an economist who studies health care, I find it hard to know whether to welcome or fear new technology. Surgeons can replace a heart valve with a plastic and metal one that unfolds once threaded through arteries—repairs that used to be made by cracking open the chest. Customized cancer drugs hold the promise of making fatal diseases treatable. At the same time, it's depressingly common to hear projections of fiscal Armageddon as health-care spending drags the U.S. federal government into debt and wipes out any wage growth for the average American. Even a recent slowdown in spending growth simply postpones the inevitable date when Medicare goes bankrupt.
(Reuters) - Technical glitches still plague the display of new healthcare plans to be offered to millions of uninsured Americans starting in 26 days, including how medical charges and deductibles are listed, industry officials say. Health insurers planning to sell policies to people who are currently uninsured, under President Barack Obama's healthcare reform, say they expect the problems will be remedied by October 1, when consumers will be able to buy health insurance from state exchanges. On Wednesday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the lead Obamacare agency, said it was on schedule to sign final agreements with insurers between September 9 and September 11, allowing them to sell specific policies on the exchanges.