In 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. The healthcare reform law was supposed to expand and improve access to care and curb spending through regulations and taxes. Its main focus was to extend healthy insurance to some of the estimated 15% of the population in the US who did not have it and improve the quality of health care. By regulating the health care industry, the law was aiming to reduce health care spending in the US. ObamaCare in theory is a great thing, but at the same time it creates financial ethical conflicts for physicians treating their patients under the new law because it creates an incentive for physicians to undertreat their patients.
There are a lot of positive aspects of the Affordable Care Act. The law …show more content…
They have said that it is an intrusion into the matters of private businesses and people. Insurance companies are backing out of participating in ObamaCare because fewer people are signing up than anticipated. This raises insurance costs for everyone, which then drives down participation further. The major ethical dilemma with the Affordable Care Act I believe is that doctors will face incentives for undertreating their patients. Most patients assume that their physician is working in their best interest whenever they treat them. And the vast majority of doctors do take their ethical responsibilities very seriously. Before ObamaCare, few physicians have compromised their professional ethics to gain financially. But the Affordable Care Act creates new ethical conflicts for …show more content…
Since one of the main goals of the law is to control health care costs, doctors will have more incentive to undertreat patients rather than undertreat like before. ObamaCare replaces the fee for service model with bundled payments, so hospitals and physicians would receive a fixed payment for treating a patient’s condition, no matter what it was and regardless of what it costs the providers. If the doctors treat the patients for less than the bundle given, they get to keep the leftover. If the reverse happens and their costs of treating the patient are higher than the bundled payment, they have to pay for the loss. Bundled payments were supposed to get rid of incentives to over treat the patients, but they created dangerous incentives to undertreat. Physicians aren’t going to want to prescribe their patients more expensive treatments and medication if they can get away with a cheaper, but maybe less effective version because they will have to pay for it out of
There are a lot of positive aspects of the Affordable Care Act. The law …show more content…
They have said that it is an intrusion into the matters of private businesses and people. Insurance companies are backing out of participating in ObamaCare because fewer people are signing up than anticipated. This raises insurance costs for everyone, which then drives down participation further. The major ethical dilemma with the Affordable Care Act I believe is that doctors will face incentives for undertreating their patients. Most patients assume that their physician is working in their best interest whenever they treat them. And the vast majority of doctors do take their ethical responsibilities very seriously. Before ObamaCare, few physicians have compromised their professional ethics to gain financially. But the Affordable Care Act creates new ethical conflicts for …show more content…
Since one of the main goals of the law is to control health care costs, doctors will have more incentive to undertreat patients rather than undertreat like before. ObamaCare replaces the fee for service model with bundled payments, so hospitals and physicians would receive a fixed payment for treating a patient’s condition, no matter what it was and regardless of what it costs the providers. If the doctors treat the patients for less than the bundle given, they get to keep the leftover. If the reverse happens and their costs of treating the patient are higher than the bundled payment, they have to pay for the loss. Bundled payments were supposed to get rid of incentives to over treat the patients, but they created dangerous incentives to undertreat. Physicians aren’t going to want to prescribe their patients more expensive treatments and medication if they can get away with a cheaper, but maybe less effective version because they will have to pay for it out of