Business and the election:
Health care faces changes in Obama administration

As anyone who has been paying attention to the presidential race knows, health care is facing major changes when president-elect Sen. Barack Obama transitions into the White House.

Health care was one of the major platforms for Obama, and his proposal for offering insurance to every American has been controversial. However, many of his points — that physicians shouldn’t be taken advantage of in malpractice suits, the need for a more efficient flow of medical information and data, and preventive screenings and care should be available to all patients — have been advocated by health care professionals for many years.

The most contested point of ObamaÂ’s health care plan is creating a National Health Insurance Exchange, which would create health care options for people who are uninsured or want new health insurance. Any American will be able to enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan, and there will be income-based sliding scale tax credits for individuals and families who need it, according to the plan. For those who want private insurance, they can keep their current plan or find another if Obama carries through with his plan to stop insurance companies from excluding people due to pre-existing conditions.

Dr. Melissa Garretson, president of the Tarrant County Medical Society, said despite offering health insurance to every American, there will be those who choose not to follow through for one reason or another. She pointed to Massachusetts, which mandated that every resident must have health insurance or pay a fine. People still opt out of insurance and pay the fine. Other government programs, like Social Security, arenÂ’t fully taken advantage of either, she said.

“We don’t have a single mandated program that people take 100 percent advantage of,” Garretson said.

America has an estimated 45 million uninsured, and the best way to provide medical care to anybody is to ensure they have a medical home. However, right now there are not enough physicians to provide every one of those individuals a medical home once they do have some kind of insurance, Garretson said. Encouraging primary care specialties and protecting the daily finances of a physician is important for the future, she said. For example, private practices are small businesses, but insurance companies often donÂ’t pay full price for services.

“What a physician charges and insurance pays is very different,” she said. “It’s a very odd way to run a business — lawyers put their rate at $600 an hour and they get paid $600 an hour. . . . The thing I worry about, just personally, is if everybody has health care but it pays me what Medicare pays me, nobody’s going to be in business very long.”

ObamaÂ’s emphasis on collecting data about health care quality is important, said Garretson. Dr. Darrin DÂ’Agostino, chair of the department of medicine at the UNT Health Science Center, said creating transparency in health care will force competition and better quality.

“Anything that will help me, as a physician, help the quality of care and access of care to my patients is good by me,” he said.

The biggest challenge with health care is that everything is interconnected, and affecting one small part will affect every other part, he said. Modifications can also have unforeseen effects far into the future.

“I don’t think this is an easy task,” he said. “Changing and modifying the health care system in the U.S. is a herculean task.”

Contact Bassett at ebassett@bizpress.net