1) Insurers don’t develop new treatments nor new equipment, including MRIs. Healthcare reform has nothing to do with that part of medical science.
2) Private insurers routinely deny new and experimental treatments right now, today. What you claim a healthcare reform bill may cause is actually commonplace practice for private insurers. That’s why they get sued sometimes, denying treatments for breast cancer, bone marrow transplants, etc., by claiming they’re experimental.
3) What Obama has talked about consistently is sharing information about “best practices” and he has given very specific examples of prestigious healthcare centers treating chronic diseases at less cost and with better results than others. The idea is not to limit, as you put it, but to learn what works and improve care for all people.
4) The federal government has been collecting data on treatments and outcomes of Medicare patients for a long time. They compare diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) outcomes and mortality rates by medical facilities. That’s for the benefit of patients by allowing them to look at and compare success rates of heart surgeries and other procedures for different hospitals. There’s a benefit for physicians and the facilities themselves. (I know, I worked at a hospital that had some bad HCFA results in the late 80s.)
The plan being proposed will allow that data to be collected for more than just Medicare patients and it can have the same beneficial results.
There’s nothing sinister about the concept of learning from data and sharing best practices. When private business does it, we applaud them and marvel at their innovation and efficiency!
Spectreman:
1) Insurers don’t develop new treatments nor new equipment, including MRIs. Healthcare reform has nothing to do with that part of medical science.
2) Private insurers routinely deny new and experimental treatments right now, today. What you claim a healthcare reform bill may cause is actually commonplace practice for private insurers. That’s why they get sued sometimes, denying treatments for breast cancer, bone marrow transplants, etc., by claiming they’re experimental.
3) What Obama has talked about consistently is sharing information about “best practices” and he has given very specific examples of prestigious healthcare centers treating chronic diseases at less cost and with better results than others. The idea is not to limit, as you put it, but to learn what works and improve care for all people.
4) The federal government has been collecting data on treatments and outcomes of Medicare patients for a long time. They compare diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) outcomes and mortality rates by medical facilities. That’s for the benefit of patients by allowing them to look at and compare success rates of heart surgeries and other procedures for different hospitals. There’s a benefit for physicians and the facilities themselves. (I know, I worked at a hospital that had some bad HCFA results in the late 80s.)
The plan being proposed will allow that data to be collected for more than just Medicare patients and it can have the same beneficial results.
There’s nothing sinister about the concept of learning from data and sharing best practices. When private business does it, we applaud them and marvel at their innovation and efficiency!