Joe Biden's Impact On Healthcare

It's official, Joe Biden is going to be the 46th President of the United States. So what is the impact of this change on both the patient and the health care provider? In this video, I'm going to go over all that information. Coming right up.

Hi providers, welcome back to the channel. If we're meeting for the first time, my name is Will Humphries and on this channel I give out information to help you increase your income, impact and freedom. And one thing that Joe Biden has made perfectly clear in previous debates is that his health care policy is to expand Obamacare. And why wouldn't it be? He helped put it into effect with President Obama in March of 2010. So before we look at expanding Obamacare and what that could mean to us, let's take a look backwards and review what has already happened around the Affordable Care act or Obamacare. Obamacare had three primary purposes, the first being to expand the coverage of health care insurance for Americans. At the time, there were 49 million Americans without health care insurance. That equated to almost 16% of all Americans who didn't have access to health care. So the first purpose was to gain access to people who didn't have it already. The second purpose was to increase the quality of care that people received, while the third purpose being to decrease cost. So now that it's 2020, how did they do? Well, the answer to that question depends a lot on who you ask. Those who are in favor of what's happened over the last 10 years will be first to tell you that over 20 million American now have access to insurance that didn't before. That lowers that rate of individuals who don't have coverage in the United states down to 8 and a half percent. In addition, there are additional benefits that people will look to, such as children being able to stay on their parents insurance until the age of 26, or people who are no longer denied access to health care coverage because of prior existing conditions. Those who aren't in favor of what's occurred over the last 10 years will tell you quickly that even though the intention was to lower costs, in many cases there was an increase in out of pocket costs. From the patient's perspective, increased out of pocket costs is a result of higher deductibles and co pays, even though in the last few years those have actually stabilized. Another point, people who didn't like Obamacare will tell you that people who owned companies, especially employers with 50 plus employees, were being mandated to provide health care coverage for all of their team members. That was an expense that wasn't something they had planned on and in many cases limited the amount of jobs and growth that that company could achieve. In addition, Americans just don't like being told what to do. So a number of people who didn't like the Obamacare initiative didn't like the individual mandate that came out that was basically stating if you don't have health care coverage, you're going to be fined. That being said, as of 2020 that fine has been reduced to zero. That all being said, what does that mean now as we look forward over the next four years? Well, it really dep on how future President Biden is able to fulfill on his promises of keeping costs low while he increases quality and coverage. The two things we're going to look at from both a patient and a provider perspective, because those two things are interchangeable almost, is first the out of pocket cost to the patient. Just like we saw in the first initiative of Obamacare. If increased deductibles and co pays exists, that's going to create a couple of impacts. Number one, patients are going to continue of course to get coverage for life changing or saving procedures and treatments, but they're going to back off from any of those life enhancing processes or health care treatments such as physical therapy or any elective surgery, simply because they may not be able to afford it. That being the case for those who are going to charge forward anyway, that's going to put a burden on the health care providers to be able to recoup those costs from their patients after the procedure or surgery has been performed. The other thing to look at is how coverage gets rolled out. When the first Obamacare went into effect, their primary technique was of course to use the marketplace which didn't work as well as they wished it had, as well as expanding state run Medicaid services. So if it goes back to a Medicaid model, for example, what we're going to see is that more Americans will in fact have coverage. But Medicaid being a lower payer because of their fee schedule, we're going to see again providers having to recoup those costs in other ways. Another way of saying that is that medical providers are going to see more patients for less money. Now, depending on how you feel about coverage and costs and in health care that may or may not be a good thing for you. But either way, medical businesses are going to try to find ways to recoup those losses. So no matter what happens here, the two things to look at as we get rolling forward into this new presidency is to first look at out of pocket cost for patients and 2 the methods by which the coverage gets extended. Either way, I want to hear from you. Is Obamacare expansion a good idea or a bad idea? Put your comments below and I will respond to every single one. And you can count on me to provide additional information as new information is provided. So if you haven't already, please consider hitting that subscribe button. Thanks for watching. Until next time.