| 来源类型 | Article
|
| 规范类型 | 评论
|
| Are ACA’s free checkups good public policy? |
| Christopher J. Conover
|
| 发表日期 | 2015-02-16
|
| 出版年 | 2015
|
| 语种 | 英语
|
| 摘要 | Are free annual checkups for adults good public policy? Not according to Al Lewis, co-author of Cracking Health Costs and Vik Khanna (Lewis’s co-author Surviving Workplace Wellness co-author. They have taken to the Huffington Post to rebuke Republicans for their failure to attack Obamacare on this issue:
I have to agree entirely with Lewis and Khanna. In light of all the evidence they trot out, including that cited by Ezekiel Emanuel in a recent New York Times column that criticized such exams, making annual checkups free for adults would be a singularly bad idea.
There’s only one problem with Lewis and Khanna’s “analysis.” There is no such provision under Obamacare. Which probably explains why Republicans haven’t wasted energy criticizing this non-existent provision. Check it out for yourself. Here’s the entire list of adult preventive services that Obamacare requires insurers to cover without any cost sharing:
15 Covered Preventive Services for Adults
Do you see routine annual physicals on that list? No. Why not? Because as Zeke Emanuel pointed out in his own column, “This lack of evidence is the main reason the United States Preventive Services Task Force — an independent group of experts making evidence-based recommendations about the use of preventive services — does not have a recommendation on routine annual health checkups.”
What Lewis and Khanna either have forgotten (or never knew) is that as it relates to adults, Obamacare only requires private insurers to cover evidence-based services for adults that have a rating of “A” or “B” in the current recommendations of the United States Preventive Services Task Force. Admittedly, the law also requires an annual well-woman preventive care visit for adult women, but only to obtain the (USPSTF) recommended preventive services (along with any additional visits if women and their health care providers determine they are necessary to deliver those services).
In short, even though this law is terribly misguided in plenty of other ways, this particular criticism by Lewis and Khanna holds no water. Let this be a warning to those who rely on Huffington Post for their health policy news.
To be clear, I continue to believe that requiring insurers to cover preventive services for free is a pretty bad idea, for the very same reason that it would be wasteful for auto insurers to be required to cover the cost of changing the oil in your car. Changing the oil regularly clearly is an essential component of responsible car ownership. Without such changes, your car engine will eventually and predictably “die.” But requiring a third party payer to cover this cost reduces the incentive for consumers to shop around for the best price. And even if insurers found some bulletproof way of guaranteeing that such oil changes would be provided at the lowest possible price, third party payment would inevitably add an administrative cost on top of that price since the insurer will have to be certain that the oil change was actually provided and/or that consumers are not foolishly getting their oil changed at 2-3 times the recommended frequency etc. These simple inconvenient truths explain why we don’t observe any auto insurance policies that cover oil changes. If Americans can be trusted to take care of their cars, they presumably can be trusted to take care of themselves. And if Americans are too “stupid” (in the words of a noted MIT health economist) to be trusted with the latter, then perhaps we should reconsider whether they are capable of self-governance. After all, how could such people be expected or trusted to elect wise leaders?
In truth, the American people don’t always pick the wisest leaders. While the leaders they chose in 2008 were misguided enough to hand us Obamacare, at least they weren’t stupid enough to require that American adults be given free annual checkups. For that, I am eminently grateful. |
| 主题 | Health Care
|
| 标签 | Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)
|
| URL | https://www.aei.org/articles/acas-free-checkups-good-public-policy/
|
| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States)
|
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物
|
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/258212
|
推荐引用方式
GB/T 7714 |
Christopher J. Conover. Are ACA’s free checkups good public policy?. 2015.
|
除非特别说明，本系统中所有内容都受版权保护，并保留所有权利。
