New Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) programs and requirements may be helping some patients with cancer, but they may be reducing access to care for others.
Mark Antonnaci of InCrowd Inc., a health care provider survey firm, has published data supporting that assessment in a summary of results from a recent online survey of 100 oncologists. The authors of the survey asked the cancer doctors who participated to talk about the effects of PPACA.
Drafters of PPACA hoped to expand all patients’ access to basic preventive care and health screenings; to provide a basic “beer” level of coverage for people with serious health problems; and to discourage excessive use of care by increasing out-of-pocket costs for middle-income patients and high-income patients.
Even before President Obama signed PPACA into law in 2010, health policymakers were talking about a need to increase patients’ out-of-pocket costs, to give them “more skin in the game.”
PPACA drafters also hoped to reduce the amount of U.S. health care spending going toward paperwork.