{"id":30146,"date":"2012-06-29T17:29:11","date_gmt":"2012-06-29T21:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=voices&p=30146"},"modified":"2012-06-29T17:29:11","modified_gmt":"2012-06-29T21:29:11","slug":"what-does-the-supreme-courts-upholding-of-healthcare-reform-mean-for-doctors-and-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2012\/06\/29\/what-does-the-supreme-courts-upholding-of-healthcare-reform-mean-for-doctors-and-patients\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does the Supreme Court’s Upholding of Healthcare Reform Mean for Doctors and Patients?"},"content":{"rendered":"

CardioExchange invited\u00a0 clinicians and health policy experts to weigh in on what the upheld Affordable Care Act means–good or bad–for doctors and patients. Here are our initial responses. Share your thoughts with us and with your trusted colleagues.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jack Lewin, MD (Principal, Lewin and Associates, Health Innovation Strategies; former CEO of the American College of Cardiology)<\/p>\n

Given the surprising but very positive decision by the Supremes to uphold the Affordable Care Act, the challenge now is to work on improving outcomes at lower costs to help make our current unstable system sustainable.\u00a0 The ACA is already having powerful positive effects. One member of my family has a significant medical disability, for example, and without the ACA’s coverage of high risk “uninsurables” this person found getting insurance almost impossible previously. Many seniors who were patients of mine tell me they can now afford their necessary medicines more easily due to the Medicare “doughnut hole” coverage in the ACA. Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts for seeing the value to building on what is already in place, if imperfect. It’s real progress.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Harry Peled, MD<\/a> (Medical Director of In-Patient Cardiology\/Non-invasive Lab & Medical Director of Critical Care, St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, CA)<\/p>\n

1.) I am grateful that my college-bound daughter can be insured for a reasonable cost<\/p>\n

2.) Chief Justice Roberts has earned tremendous credibility for himself and the court<\/p>\n

3.) The Act does absolutely nothing to control medicare costs or reduce either inappropriate care or industry influence. (see for example, my post on the wearable ICD<\/a>).\u00a0 These issues pose serious dangers to our system.\u00a0 We have twice the average healthcare costs of the rest of the developed world, and rather than addressing this issue, the current law mostly shifts these costs around.<\/p>\nSorry, there are no polls available at the moment.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weigh in on what the SCOTUS\/ACA decision means to you, your patients, and your family<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":343,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1194,1099,1204,1341],"class_list":["post-30146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-affordable-care-act","tag-health-policy","tag-healthcare-reform-efforts","tag-us-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/343"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}