The Detroit News published Dr. Don Condit’s Acton commentary on Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in today’s paper. The ACOs are designed to manage costs under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.
Medicare beneficiaries will be “assigned” to 5,000 patient-minimum organizations to coordinate their care. While HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius talks about improvement in care, the politically poisonous truth is that Medicare is going broke and ACOs are designed to save money.
The words “rationing” or “treatment denial” or “withholding care” are not part of her press release, but reading the regulations reveals intentions to “share savings” with those who fulfill, or “penalize” others who fall short of, the administration’s objectives. The administration’s talking points include politically palatable words that emphasize quality improvement and care enhancement when the real objective is cost control by a utilitarian calculus.
Physicians and other health care providers will find themselves in conflict with the traditional ethos of duty to patient within ACOs. Doctors will face agency conflicts between the time honored primary duty to patient. Medical care providers will receive incentives for controlling spending, and penalties if they do not. “No one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24); not even physicians.
Read “Obamacare rules belie compassion, care” on the Detroit News website.
