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We need lifesaving drugs and surgeries and cancer treatments.
Javier Pardina / Stocksy.com
But at what cost?
But while the ACA helped anestimated 16 millionmore Americans get health insurance, its far from perfect.
Dr. Rosenthal is a physician turned health reporter who has spent more than 20 years writing about health.
Heres what she had to say.
Dr. Rosenthal:In our country, the origins of insurance began around the start of the 20th century.
The more medicine can do, the more you need insurance because health care costs more.
A lot of health care has been what Id like to call kind of keeping up with the joneses.
My neighbor has it at his job, so I want it too.
So health care got more expensive, insurance became more widespread, and more people wanted it.
Progressively, insurance expanded, and health care was tied to work.
Its a natural thing for everyone to want a bad guy.
Its big pharma, its insurers, its hospitals.
I think theres plenty of blame to go around, and thats what I want people to understand.
Some of my best sources for the book were physicians who said this is really painful for them.
If youre a caring doctor, which most of them are, youre in a terrible position.
What happens next is insurers say thats too expensive, so they negotiate a lower rate with the hospital.
So you owe $732, and youre like what, why?
Its really a shockingly complicated system.
You draw one tube of blood, and it goes into a machine and all those numbers spit out.
$50 for sodium, $50 for glucose, etc.
Because some of us pay those bills.
The ultimate pocketbook is you and me, but its not always that direct.
And they really add up.
A lot of people are now finding that its unsupportable.
If were paying more than we should for basic health care, that involves so many trade-offs.
Its a choice between health insurance or putting their kid in preschool.
[Laughs] Well, the simple answer is we as patients and our insurers allow it.
We like to say its market-based health care, but theres no market, really.
And if you try and get that information, youre frequently at an impasse.
You dont know prices, you cant find prices, you dont get them before the procedure.
Which kind of gets into why we need a more systemic solution.
Many of which have been tried elsewhere and even here on a small scale.
For example, lets talk about drug pricing.
One of the ideas on the table in Congress is if we should let Medicare negotiate drug prices.
We can also import drugs from other countries.
Imagine what TVs would cost if you couldnt buy an imported brand.
When a drug is prescribed, you and your doctor likely have no idea what that will cost.
I went to fill his prescription and the pharmacist said, That will be $2,500.
I was like, Im a physician and I know thats not worth $2,500.
I felt like it was robbery, and I almost didnt take it.
But then I said, Wait, I need this, it could be life-threatening.
So what happens to the person who cant put it on their credit card?
I got most back after arguing with the insurance company, but thats not a system.
A lot of countries have price lists in doctors offices.
In most states I cant see a price list, its considered privileged information.
I can guarantee if hospitals posted prices, theyd be so embarrassed to say what theyre charging.
To me the, first step is understanding whats behind those bills.
Why are the prices this high?
Sometimes you might find a really great male ob/gyn in-web link.
Maybe its time to ask your ob/gyn to do those renewals by phone.
Doctors are just checking off boxes and usually dont really know how much something is going to cost.
They may not know the lab isnt in your insurance web connection.
When someone says theyre going to just draw a little blood, I ask what its for.
And I ask them to verify its sent to an in-internet lab.
In the process of getting it approved, some features proposed initially had to be removed.
It did establish insurance as a fundamental right and got millions of new people insured.
The ACA did important things, but it did not make health care affordable for every American.
But to say its completely the ACAs fault premiums are going up everywhere isnt really fair or accurate.
