Medtech Issues in the 2012 Election Year

Published: June 11, 2012
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The Affordable Care Act Gets Poor Marks from Physicians in Recent Survey

By: Brian Buntz

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) will likely not succeed in reducing the cost of healthcare in the United States, according to a recent survey of 2694 physicians. At least, that was the opinion of 70% of the survey frespondents. 67% of them also felt the legislation would not improve the doctor-patient relationship. Only 12% of respondents reported that the ACA “brought the reform needed in healthcare.”

The survey also asked physicians to grade the reform. Although 31% of felt the reform was worthy of an “A” or “B,” the mean average grade was a “D.”

According to the survey, which was organized by Jackson Healthcare:

  • 66% of respondents said ACA would weaken physicians' control over their practice decisions.
  • 61% said ACA would not improve the quality of healthcare.
  • 55% said Congress should scrap ACA and start over.
  • 54% said ACA would increase patients' access to care.
  • 49% said ACA would give patients less control over their healthcare.
  • 35% said it did nothing to reform healthcare.
  • 31% said ACA didn't go far enough and a single-payer system is needed.
  • 22% said ACA went too far and impedes a physician's ability to practice medicine.

While the U.S. public remains uncomfortable with some of the legislations reforms, others remain popular. For example, the provision to allow parents to extend insurance to their children until the age of 26 has wide support. In fact, UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest private health insurance company, has announced that will continue to offer this provision, even if the Supreme Court strikes the legislation down in a ruling expected later this month. In addition, UnitedHealthcare also supports other provisions of the ACA such as the use of preventive services such as immunizations or screening for diabetes without requiring co-payments.

Brian Buntz is the editor-at-large at UBM Canon's medical group. Follow him on Twitter at @brian_buntz.

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A Story of Foreboding

Submitted by deviceguy on June 13, 2012 - 6:07pm.

Working in corporate management for a major Pharma & Medical Device company gives me the opportunity to travel and converse with a lot of different people. On a flight back from a Pharma & Medical Device distribution center in Toronto Canada, I had the opportunity to talk to the person sitting next to me who was Canadian and headed to the US.

I assumed that she was flying to the US to go on vacation as most people do when they travel to the US. She informed me that she was on her way to a Hospital in the US to have an MRI and start her chemotherapy treatment. My heart stopped for a moment as I attempted to recover from the shock of her announcement, knowing that this meant that she had been diagnosed with cancer. But at the same time, my curiosity was peaked as the US is headed for the same government health care program that Canada has, and Congress had pointed to Canada as a great model of what our program will look like. So then why was she traveling to the US if the Canadian health care system is as great as our government professes?

She told me that she could not get an MRI performed in Canada, as it was not approved. Then she told me that she was on a waiting list to receive chemotherapy and that she couldn’t wait the almost 2 years to start, as by then the cancer would have progressed too far along for there to be a reasonable probability of a positive outcome.

I told her that she was lucky. She looked at me very strangely and asked in a very irritated way, “How is it that I am lucky?” I said, that you are lucky that this is happening now, because if this were to have occurred in a year or two, you may not be able to receive the MRI or treatment in the US either, because the US would have implemented there Canadian equivalent government health care program which would have put you in the same situation. She smiled and said, “I guess you’re right. I hadn’t thought of it.” She said, “I don’t stay current on what you Americans are doing.” I replied, “Yeah, sadly, neither do most Americans”, which got a big laugh out of her. I think she was French Canadian.
As we de-boarded, I wished her well and told her I would say a prayer for her – and the American people. She laughed again.

It’s sad that most Americans have no idea what is about to happen to them. And by the time it does, and they realize it, it will be too late to do anything about it.