Spare a Buck? New $1 Obamacare Fee Begins Wednesday

[STIBROKER]

Spare a buck? New $1 Obamacare fee begins Wednesday « Watchdog.org

A new annual fee charged to health insurance plans and companies that self-insure is due for the first time later this week. The fee was created by the federal Affordable Care Act and will be used to fund a new federal initiative designed to study the effectiveness of health treatment and outcomes. Insurance companies and employers that self-insure will be charged $1 per person covered by their insurance plans.

 

[somarco]

PBGC started out the same way. Today it is $42


Pension Insurance Premiums Fact Sheet

 

[RayNY]

Honestly, this is way overdue. We have no idea how effective or harmful many of the treatments in widespread use actually are. It seems like every week there is some new article showing that some accepted test is wildly inaccurate, excessively costly compared to alternatives, or even dangerous. This is one of the few things that may bend the cost curve by promoting more efficient and reliable testing.

 

[Yagents]

Yah, The gov't knows best vs. my doctor who reads about these studies every day. Someday, I may just get that plastic heart

 

[RayNY]

This is to fund those studies... Almost all are currently funded by the companies that make the product. The point of this fee is to create impartial, results driven, patient-centric data to help improve outcomes, not drive use of a new product or test.

I'm not sure if you've ever read any of these whitepapers, but I've never seen one that showed the product in question was inferior to the existing option.