Dr. John Geyman, Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle writes in The Huffington Post that the new Patient Protection and Affordable Act of 2010 (PPACA) won’t do enough to tame exploding healthcare costs. His essay breaks down the flaws in the complicated law in bullet points that are easy to understand. For example PPACA has:
• No price controls. Wall Street has already factored in rapid expansion of markets for drugs, medical devices and other services in a system of expanded access. There is also a long line forming of providers of information technology and administrative services that will exploit the complex implementation of this law.
• No bulk purchasing. The PPACA has prohibited the government from negotiating the prices of prescription drugs and retains a ban on importation of drugs from Canada and other countries.
• Lack of control over perverse incentives that drive increased volume of services. These in turn are driven by retention of fee-for-service (FFS) reimbursement that encourages physicians and other providers to offer more services than are medically appropriate or necessary.
• No effective mechanism to rein in marginal or ineffective technologies. Coverage policies for new drugs and medical devices are still lax and not subject to rigorous evidence-based criteria for either efficacy or cost-effectiveness.
Click here to read the rest of Dr. Geyman’s article.