Affordable Care Act. “The Sky is Falling!” No It’s Not.

Posted on | March 25, 2015 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

Since the signing and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, with its successful provision of coverage for millions of uninsured and expansion of Medicaid in participating states, there has been a constant stream of warnings of impending disasters of various sorts.

It will break the bank! Early results show the opposite to be true.

Over utilization, fraud and waste will abound! There is no evidence of an uptick in any of these areas.

And finally, we’ll run out of doctors and their offices will be swamped by needy, super-sick patients!

On this final fear, Athena Health with the RWJ Foundation have just completed an analysis of the physician workforce demands secondary to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Some had warned that physician offices would be overrun by the new demand and chaos would reign. The results were far less dramatic.

The Issue:

“In the first year of the ACA’s health insurance expansion, some expected an influx of sick, newly insured patients to burden many practices across the nation. However, in 2014 there was only a very small increase in new patients while the percentage of patients with complex medical needs decreased.”

The Findings:

1. “New patient visits to primary care providers increased very slightly from 22.6% of all appointments in 2013 to 22.9% in 2014.”

2. “The percentage of visits with patients with complex medical needs decreased from 8.0% of appointments in 2013 to 7.5% in 2014.”

3. “The ACA has decreased the overall proportion of uninsured patients receiving care in physician offices, especially in Medicaid expansion states.”

4. “The number of diagnoses per patient visit also did not increase sharply compared to the previous year’s data.”

Passions aside, looks like we’re on the right track.