Check out the first part in a series about the new health care law in action. It’s superb journalism from The New York Times painting a wide-sweeping picture of how different clinics are ramping up to the new legislation. This first story is set in Louisville, an interesting city in that it’s set some incredible medical precedents (first hand transplant, first successful transplant of a self-contained artificial heart) but also has the highest rate of death from preventable conditions like obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes. The story follows a low-income clinic, revealing the abysmal salaries of the practitioners, two patients in dire conditions unwilling to get prescribed treatment, and an educator trying to help these clinics ramp up to the expected patient increase.
We’re going to follow this piece and we encourage you to do so as well. This type of writing can lead to the conversation we’ve been having for years now. Why do we depend on the government to solve our problems, and why do we let them enact legislation that would discourage hard-working, entrepreneurial individuals from offering solutions? Even more damning to proponents of Obamacare is that this story is revealing that patients who are low income, and currently unable to afford needed services like podiatry visits for nerve damage from diabetes, and insulin because they are type II diabetic, might not get those things after ACA takes effect. Yes, these people are mandated to get insurance, but that still leaves a problem: will Medicare provide enough money for them to actually see the doctor?
Medicare is essentially most beneficial to people who make ~ $15,000 year (this is outright poverty). In this story’s case, the patients make more than this, but while receiving subsidies are living down to the penny—one having to budget $240 monthly for insulin. The reality is that Obamacare is NOT free insulin, it’s just a mandate to get insurance, and will cost these struggling people money if they don’t accede to the new ruling. The problem is that for people who aren’t working, and who live in tight budgets, this does not create extra money to afford the insurance, the copay for the visit, and the prescription. That leaves them where they were before, burdened, unhappy, and unable to get the treatment they need to improve their health
More Reading
“A Louisville Clinic Races to Adapt to the Health Care Overhaul” | The New York Times