The price of medications from generic drugs to specialty cancer drugs is leaving many Americans out of luck in affording their necessary medications.
Headlines include, “The Washington Post’s,” “How Expensive medications are increasingly out of reach,” “PwC’s Health Research Institute Projects Modest Uptick in Healthcare Spending Growth Rate in 2015-Stronger economy and specialty drugs fuel higher growth next year, tempered by purchaser demands for value,” “Doctors group joins fight against ‘skyrocketing’ drug prices,” by Dan Mangan, 2/3/2015, “Almost 1 in 10 Americans Can’t Afford Medications Says CDC,” “Renal and Urology News,” 2/4/2015.
But aside from illogically adhering to the stale campaign-style touting of Obamacare’s “success,” there is no reason that consumers should be surprised that their access to healthcare because of prices continues to be a concrete barrier to obtaining healthcare, just as it has been for decades and that it's getting worse as prices go up and health insurance “coverage” goes down.
Honestly motivated fear-mongers will argue that it’s worse but not as bad as it would be under the leadership of their Republican counterparts. Less honest fear-mongers will argue that the worsening of access to needed healthcare is “slowing down,” a largely meaningless statement for individual consumers, and Democratic liars will argue that access is better. All of these strategies have proven successful as ad campaigns rather than fact. One by one we see the campaign lies exposed as "news" reports such as those cited above of the completely predictable confirm that the US healthcare crisis is alive and well.
Anyone at this point who argues that Obamacare’s cost-shifting emphasis on consumers bearing more costs for healthcare services and care was some sort of revolutionary “reform” should be ignored by consumers. It’s bad information and yellow journalism in the same vein as, “Martians land intent on eating babies,” except worse because people want to believe.
Why would the unaffordability of needed medication be surprising if we understood that the shift of expenses to consumers under Obamacare has steadily focused on reducing government, private health insurer and employer health insurance expenses by pushing those expenses onto consumers? We wouldn’t. The problem is that we didn’t get that. But we get it now and it informs our positions as well as directs us that this trend is continuing promising ongoing restrictions to access to needed medical care and services under Obamacare OR SOME OTHER PLAN that fails to address consumer interests.
For 2015, it’s time for consumers to start “getting it,” the prices of needed health care and services keep going up, the health insurance coverage of needed health care and services keeps going down, regardless of your health insurance type.
Every predictive publication indicates that this trend will continue as consumers are pushed into the cheaper high deductible plans that cover less even as prices go up.
The INTENT of employers, insurers and the government is to continue to reduce THEIR expenses by shifting MORE expenses onto consumers which removes those stakeholders’ motivation to address in any meaningful way the continued rise in prices.
This is logical for stakeholders and perilous for consumers, after all, if you say that no matter what the cost of something I’m willing to pay up to $10 towards it, then you don’t care what the total cost is because your liability is up to $10. That’s what shifting the burden of health expenses to consumers does.
The good news is that if consumers begin to IGNORE the phony reports of “success” they’ll be less afraid of “things getting worse” because that’s what’s happening anyway. This can translate into a meaningful consumer effort to influence government, including state governments to STOP doing the easy fix of cannibalizing consumers and begin addressing the healthcare crisis a problem at a time.
Balance billing legislation, for instance, should not be a hurdle because it’s based on a basic fair deal concept, if I don’t know you’re out of network I shouldn’t have to pay your exorbitant fees. Yet most state and the federal government shrink away from it because it would require work, taking their jobs seriously enough to face down stronger stakeholders than the generalized “consumer” and insist on a fix, a tougher job than the lazy-man’s let’s go after the consumer for that approach.
The importance for consumers to recognize that the continued push to reduce payer’s costs necessarily increases their expenses UNLESS prices for needed medical care and services goes down is vital because otherwise as government, insurers and employers seek to reduce their costs they will continue to overburden consumers.
Obamacare has not addressed the problem of exorbitant and rising prices of medically needed services and care in a meaningful way and it will not because Obamacare is focused on limiting costs for government, health insurers and employers, NOT consumers. Consumers remain the go-to piggybank to reduce government, employer and private health insurer spending and therefore any increase in those stakeholders' expenses is passed on to us, as it has been under the Affordable Care Act's cheap solution of making consumers pay more rather than looking to reduce the prices of healthcare services.
This understanding would have prevented any newsworthiness of the fact that cost is the single most significant barrier to obtaining needed healthcare services and care whether an individual has "insurance" or not and that Obamacare has made this aspect of the healthcare crisis worse by emphasizing putting more of the burden of those costs onto consumers, removing motivation of payers to pressure providers and negotiate with providers in order to put a stop to the rise in prices.
Already the “trend” of reduced spending is reversing, (See, “US Health-Care Spending Is on the Rise Again,” by John Tozzi, 2/18/15, Bloomberg Business), and who do you think is going to be negatively impacted when the government once again has to “reduce its costs”?
