Health reform's competition-crushers

NY Post ^ | November 22, 2010 | SCOTT GOTTLIEB

[Scanian]

Liberal consumer groups are aghast to learn that the Obama health team are really monopolists at heart, bent on handing hospitals a cartel in their local markets.

Sunday's New York Times report on this horror confirms what I wrote about in these pages weeks ago ("Killing Marcus Welby," PostOpinion, Oct. 18). I warned that the creation of "accountable care organizations," which put hospitals in control of all the doctors in their outlying areas, would lead to concentrated power over the provision of medical care -- turning physicians into salaried employees and reducing consumer choices

ACOs were invented as a way to cut costs in Medicare. But the administration plainly means to use them as the tools for vastly greater government control of the health-care system, by having them displace traditional health plans.

In anticipation of this, the marketplace is already consolidating. The resulting ACO monopolies will solidify the effects of ObamaCare. Even if the "reform" law is repealed in a few years, it may be too late.

The ACOs will offer coverage directly via the insurance exchanges that the ObamaCare law orders into being in 2014. These exchanges are where most Americans will eventually buy their "private" insurance -- and the White House is working to give the ACOs privileges that will let them undersell normal health insurers.

[originalbuckeye]

Around 1981 I was completing my BS in Health Care. One class was about HMO’s. The instructor was saying that Healthcare was now a ‘three-legged stool’. The Doctor, the patient and the Health Maintenance Organization. Now, I'm sitting on class thinking ‘that will surely make costs go up’. Just another entity that needs money to thrive. I never thought it would catch on. Now we are getting the biggest HMO ever in Obamacare. After I was married I worked in the NHS in Britain. Americans have NO IDEA how much Healthcare they won't be getting when the Government takes over. And better watch out for your way of life! The Government suggests all sorts of things (like Moochelle's food police) when they are spending 'their money' (your new taxes to cover Obamacare) on your Healthcare.

[originalbuckeye]

PS-Most Doctors on America will not accept the usurping of their decision making power. We will be in for a massive Doctor shortage.

[Mason]

You’re spot on, OB. Are you still in Great Britain? I happen to be in Columbus, myself, though I root for the Wolverines.

[GailA]

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