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Penalties Will Not Promote Participation In ACOs

As we get closer to January 2012, the originally scheduled implementation date for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), the time has come to reexamine the showpiece of President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010.

The final rules for ACO’s are now scheduled for release on January 2012. The implementation was originally scheduled for January 2012. As the original rules are being studied and interpreted the program for ACOs implementation became more confusing. Dr. Don Berwick (CMS Director) has refused to discuss the final rules until they have been published in the Federal Register.

“The ACO program is based on the hubristic assumption that the federal government can design the best organizational structure for the delivery of care, foster its development, and control its operation for the entire country.

The federal government has big-footed health system reform. Although there is no one right way to organize care, the federal government (Dr. Don Berwick and President Obama) thinks it has found one—and exerts top-down, bureaucratic control through PPACA to implement it.”

ACOs are supposed to be organizations that improve coordinated care. If an ACO decreases the cost of care Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Repairing the Healthcare System*

All Attempts To Reduce Bureaucracy In The Healthcare System Will Increase It

“The media is the message.” It does not matter if the policy has failed previously.  All that is important is the effectiveness of the policy’s presentation and its ability to manipulate the polls.

The government’s purpose is to work for the people who elected it. It does not seem to be working that way at present. Bureaucrats create rules or regulations as they interpret the laws made by congress and the president. Regulations are controlled by the administration’s ideology. Many times the regulations in one area nullify the intended effect in another area.

Regulations and bureaucracy inhibit the use of common sense in policy making for the benefit of the people.

The people did not have an outlet to express their opinions or frustrations until blogging came into its own seven years ago.

Americans do not like President Obama’s healthcare reform act. They also do not like Dr. Don Berwick’s apparent disrespect for their intelligence and his infatuation with the British healthcare system.

“I am romantic about the NHS (British National Health Service); I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.” Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Repairing the Healthcare System*

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