Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Obamacare Meetings

A few months ago I received a phone call asking me to meet with a group of medical providers, hospital staff, and patients to discuss the Affordable Care Act's requirements and how they were being implemented by our community hospital.

As you can imagine I found that exciting and it was more fun than I could ever have imagined.  We meet every three months to discuss different issues and hear a report on the progress made on prior issues we've discussed.

This is education in the fast lane for me.  It gives me a chance to see the Affordable Care Act through the eyes of the hospital and what they're doing to meet the requirements.  Very interesting.

I get to see through the eyes of clinic and hospital staff the issues they're dealing with every day.  Many of those issues have nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act but the discussion then turns to anything in the Affordable Care Act that might help in managing those issues.

And, I get to hear other patients experiences, some good and some bad.

In March we will discuss patient medications.  Oh my, what a nightmare.  I can promise you no solutions will come from that meeting but we'll gnaw around on the topic for a while.

The Affordable Care Act is an enormous piece of legislation with so many pieces it would be impossible to put the puzzle together to see the whole picture.  I know of no one who thought this legislation was all that it needed to be at the time it became law.  It's a working piece that will hopefully become better with time.

It's in everyone's best interest if we work together to make healthcare work in this country.  When I see congress voting as many as fifty times to repeal this legislation I get angry.  The reason I get angry is these people know when they call these votes that their vote will be vetoed by the president and they don't have the votes to override his veto.  Wouldn't it be smarter to spend their time looking for ways to make the current legislation work better?  Healthcare should not carry a political party label.

4 comments:

  1. I couldn't agree with you more. Our legislators make it impossible to get anything done, having their attitudes about the "other" party.
    Your meetings do sound interesting though.

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  2. I agree with you completely! We so needed some sort of health care act in this country and now we at least have a working piece to start with.

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  3. Oh, those meetings and discussions sound like a wonderful opportunity! I'm so glad they found someone like you to participate.
    The ACA is a work in progress, which is why I wish the Democratic candidates could stop squabbling over it and just find ways to improve it. You must know I side with Hillary on this. Idealism is great, but it takes pragmatism to achieve policy in politics.

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  4. Totally agree with that last paragraph. Why do they (congress) keep trying to undo rather than refine? Grr.
    I have lots of thoughts on medications and they aren't particularly printable. Let us know how it goes.

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