Obamacare is bending the cost curve
Bill Maher’s guest was Atul Gawande, practicing surgeon and author of the new book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. The book discusses end of life health care. He is also the author of White House required reading New Yorker article The Cost Conundrum. Atul Gawande examined the effects of Obamacare in McAllen Texas. He concluded the following.
As America struggles to extend health-care coverage while curbing health-care costs, we face a decision that is more important than whether we have a public-insurance option, more important than whether we will have a single-payer system in the long run or a mixture of public and private insurance, as we do now. The decision is whether we are going to reward the leaders who are trying to build a new generation of Mayos and Grand Junctions. If we don’t, McAllen won’t be an outlier. It will be our future.
Bill Maher asked Atul Gawande if the reason the growth in healthcare cost is down by record amounts is due to Obamacare. He said it is likely so given the empirical data. Atul also said he is currently quantifying the results with research.
60 Minutes recently did a piece in which they interviewed Steven Brill, author of the book “America’s bitter pill“. 60 Minutes made the following point in the segment.
Brill, who has spent years investigating the healthcare industry and the creation of the Affordable Care Act, said Obamacare has made healthcare more accessible for Americans; but the overall cost of healthcare has not gone down as the president said would happen.
“It’s because of the legislation,” Brill said. “There’s nothing in the legislation that brings down the cost of healthcare.”
Atul Gawande was asked if that statement was true. He said that Steven Brill got that part wrong. This was a substantive discussion one would expect on the traditional mainstream media channels. Instead, it was relegated mostly to print and comedy shows.