New York City has the biggest homeless populace within u. S ., an difficulty the metropolis has tackled thru prevention, lower-priced housing, and health care initiatives. At the safety-net health device for the town, New York City Health + Hospitals, which serves more than a million humans 12 months, figuring out and supporting to care for homeless New Yorkers is part of our transformation efforts. Using data technological know-how to identify and “phenotype” our homeless patients facilitates us to tailor their care and fit them to the right hospital and network-based totally supports—in the long run consisting of housing itself. In the last few months, we’ve seen many Health Care Reform rules and regulations being introduced by the Health and Human Services Department. Every time that happens, the media gets hold of it, and all kinds of articles are written in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the TV network news programs talk about it. All the analysts start talking about the pros and cons and what it means to businesses and individuals.
The problem with this is, many times, one writer looked at the regulation and wrote a piece about it. Then other writers start using pieces from that first article and rewriting parts to fit their article. By the time the information gets widely distributed, the actual regulations and rules get twisted and distorted. What actually shows up in the media sometimes doesn’t truly represent the reality of what the regulations say. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what is going on with ObamaCare, and one of the things that I’ve noticed in discussions with clients is that there’s an underlying set of myths that people have picked up about health care reform that isn’t true. But because of all they’ve heard in the media, people believe these myths are actually true.
Today we’re going to talk about three myths I hear most commonly. Not everybody believes these myths, but enough do, and others are unsure what to believe, so it warrants dispelling these myths now. The first one is that health care reform only affects uninsured people. The second one is that Medicare benefits and the Medicare program aren’t going to be affected by health care reform. And then the last one is that health care reform is going to reduce the costs of healthcare.
Health Care Reform Only Affects Uninsured
Let’s look at the first myth about health care reform only affecting uninsured people. In a lot of the discussions I have with clients, there are several expressions they use: “I already have coverage so that I won’t be affected by ObamaCare,” or “I’ll just keep my grandfathered health insurance plan.” The last one – and this one I can give them a little bit of leeway because part of what they’re saying is true — is “I have group health insurance so that I won’t be affected by health care reform.” Well, the reality is that health care reform is actually going to affect everybody. Starting in 2014, we’re going to have a whole new set of health plans, and those plans have wealthy benefits with lots of extra features that the existing plans today don’t offer. So these new plans are going to be higher cost.
