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Doctors best to decide a patient’s care
As a physician, I am disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision to let the president’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) stand as it was passed. I believe that more reforms will be needed to achieve the health care system that Americans deserve and desire.
The most damaging aspect of the ACA is undoubtedly the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB will be a group of 15 unelected bureaucrats with the power to make drastic cuts to Medicare that may disregard the proven treatment options that doctors rely on. IPAB’s “recommendations” may force doctors to make care decisions solely based on cost and may force them to limit the number of Medicare patients they treat all together.
Prescribing the best treatments is our job, not a task for an unaccountable agency in Washington. Lawmakers should work to remove IPAB authority as soon as possible.
Dr. James Justice
Cedar Rapids
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Insurance companies already do this – unelected bureaucrats, who answer to stockholders and the stock market. Medicare already is covered my massively complex private insurance plans, which currently refuse coverage, or influence prescribing habits through constricted lists of covered drugs.
My insurance company has many drugs that are not on formulary, and others that have very high co-pays. Some drugs require me to go through an entire panel of lower cost drugs, which I already did with a different insurance company, before I can obtain the drug that my doctor wants me to have. The problem is not the current health law – those problems exist with private insurance companies.