Category Archives: indiana

What happens to Pence’s HIP 2.0 if Obamacare is repealed?

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve written previously about the Healthy Indiana Plan started by former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels and updated to version 2.0 under Governor and Vice President-Elect Mike Pence as Indiana’s unique take on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act‘s Medicaid expansion.

In short, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Pence (to put it mildly), but I gave him credit where was due for finding a way to expand access to health care in Indiana even when it meant negotiating with his political rivals in the Obama administration.

But the Obama administration is about to come to an end, and the incoming Trump administration has made repealing and replacing PPACA (more commonly known as Obamacare) one of its top priorities in its first 100 days, which might cause as many as 21 million Americans to lose their health coverage.

Senate Democrats will have enough votes to filibuster any bill to repeal Obamacare, but just as Democrats got the fix-it bill through the Senate in 2010 via the budget reconciliation process to avoid a GOP filibuster, Republicans will probably not shy away from using the same tactic.

So, assuming Republicans go this route, what will happen to one of Pence’s signature achievements as governor of Indiana? After all, HIP 2.0 relies on the federal funds for the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act.

That’s going to be an awkward conversation.

Link

It’s still not a pretty picture in my home state of Indiana when it comes to preventable medical errors…like severe bed sores, wrong-site surgeries, foreign objects left inside of patients and falls. From The Indianapolis Star:

For the past eight years in an effort to curb the number of preventable mistakes that happen in Indiana, hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, abortion clinics and birthing centers have been required to report 28 serious adverse events to the Indiana State Department of Health.

In 2013, 111 medical errors occurred at 293 facilities, according to a report recently released by state health officials. That’s more medical errors than have occurred in any year since the state started requiring facilities to report these events.

Indeed, preventable medical errors are the #3 cause of death in America, responsible for 1 out of 6 deaths. So this problem is literally killing us in very large numbers, and we don’t seem to be making much progress.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In a six-country survey, U.S. patients reported the highest rate of medical errors…a dubious honor indeed. (In case you’re wondering, the other five countries in the survey were the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, New Zealand and Canada.)

I know that physicians and hospitals recognize this problem and are making good-faith efforts to improve this and trying all kinds of strategies to improve it. But why aren’t we making any real headway? Why is the care in the United States so uniquely inconsistent despite costing so much more?

If you’ve read enough of this blog, you probably know the reasons already.

What do you think? I’m interested to read your comments.