Healthcare Reform, finally
Admittedly, I have not read the entire Healthcare Reform bill. But, I am aware of several inclusions regarding patient safety and hospital acquired infections. Unless these things were excised from the bill that passed the House on Sunday, they are still in there.
The Healthcare bill’s approaches to infection prevention and patient safety included many approaches. One approach was that the lowest performing hospitals will get their medicare reimbursement dropped by 2%. And why not? Actually that percentage would most likely be higher if Medicare just refused to reimburse for any hospital acquired infections. If hospitals are unable to care for people, particularly the elderly, without infecting them, Medicare (and other rinsurers) should not pay and neither should the patients.
I am so happy for the millions of citizens who now will be empowered and able to get healthcare insurance. I attended a meeting with the Maine Insurance Commissioner a few weeks back. She was hearing stories from Maine citizens about their private Anthem insurance policies. Anthem was greedily pursuing a hefty 23% increase in premiums from these already hard hit customers. Some had policies that cost them over $10,000 a year and they had over $10,000 deductibles to meet. That is not healthcare insurance, that is homeowners insurance. It is the only way those people cold protect their homes and other belongings if they got sick. And some of them already were sick. Anthem had lawyers in the hearings so they could protest or object to what these hard hit customers were saying. It was despicable when they objected.
Finally, the Anthems of the country will be forced into fairness, and competition. Medicare for all would have been my choice for Heathcare reform, but the HC bill that passed on Sunday will suffice, for now. Now we can get on with the business of actually providing good, safe, affordable Health Care.
