I heard some good news about the ACA.

[upaloopa]

I work for a county alcohol, drug and mental health department.
Today I was in a meeting where our FY 13-14 budget was explained.
We have a large number of indigent clients. The cost to give them services comes from various taxes levied on the public.
Starting in Jan 2014 many of our indegent will get Medicaid or Medical here in CA.
We usually get 50% of what we bill Medical.
For these new clients we will get reimbursed 100% under the ACA. Where we used to get nothing we will get fully paid which means we will have more money so we will give mental health services to more people than before the ACA.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I hope this is just the start of the good news from the ACA.

Thanks for letting us know!

[southernyankeebelle]

2. The word needs to be spread.

[BlueStreak]

3. And let us not forget that before the ACA entered the arena, our health care costs

were going up by 15-20% every single year. And now, for three years running, health care costs have risen under 4% each of those years -- just barely more than the cost of inflation.

One year is a fluke. Two years is possibly a coincidence. Three years is a trend.

Why is this getting no attention?
The priority of ACA was access, not cost containment, but there are significant measures in the law, already in effect, that are intended to "bend the curve downward". Most notably is the requirement that 85% of the premiums go toward actual health care.

This is working, yet nobody seems to mention that.

Granted, if we put more emphasis on cost containment, we could cut our costs by half. But taking us off that disastrous 15-20% course is a huge accomplishment that everybody should be raving about.

Meanwhile, I have to find a new family doc because mine has decided to join the VIP-MD group of concierge doctoring. To remain in his practice, I would have to pay him an extra $1500 out of pocket every year so that I can have a couple more minutes with him!? I spend as little time with doctors as I can already. Why would I want to pay $1500 for that "privilege"? If I have a serious problem, I'll end up with a specialist anyway. He is robocalling my house about every 3 days now wondering when I'm going to send in that $1500 check. My guess is not a lot of patients are buying into that program.

[Blanks]

4. Sounds cheesy.

It's like when the folks at Best Buy follow you around trying to sell you virus protection and extended warranty.

You tried; now leave me alone. You hardly expect that from doctors.

[BlueStreak]

6. He claims to be dropping from 4500 patients to 500

It has been a "walk-ins welcome" practice, so that 4500 number is probably everybody who ever walked in over a period of 15 years. I'm guessing his current practice is probably about 1500 somewhat regular patients. And the MD VIP system that he's joining talks about a concierge practice of 700 patients.

http://www.mdvip.com/

That is about $1,000,000 op front money a year for him if he can get people to buy in. His argument is that he doesn't want to practice medicine where he can only spend 6 minutes and 30 seconds with each patient, but he cannot afford to spend more time under the current insurance practices. To his credit, he has never blamed any of that on "Obamacare". That would have been the unforgivable sin. I did have an ophthalmologist who did exactly that. A former ophthalmologist.

It is a free country. If he can get 500-700 patients to fork over the money, it is certainly his right to do that. That isn't for me.

And just doing the arithmetic, if he works 200 days a year and has 700 patients, and each patient figures that they are paying for extra service so they should be seen at least 10 times during the year, that works out to 35 patients a day or 13 minutes per patient -- if they are all evenly spaced. And of course they won't be, so it could be that I wouldn't actually get any more of his time than I do now. I'm not going to spend $1500 to find out.

[BlueStreak]

7. I just realized that MD VIP is owned by P&G

http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2010/02/proctor-and-gamble-buys-mdvip-physician.html

Which raises some obvious conflict-of-interest questions.

[libodem]

5. Beautiful

Best news, ever! and Sofa King cool