Words matter. Right now, for good or bad, as the torch is being passed from one president to new one, one of the key platforms that PEOTUS ran on was eliminating Obamacare. But as the reality of that potential grows closer, social media is abuzz with debates. It would appear that some people didn’t fully understand what they signed up for. Going viral on Facebook, a poster celebrates the demise of Obamacare, patting himself on the back that he had the good sense to go with the Affordable Care Act instead. This person is not alone – witness the Twitter poster who berates Senator Murray: “Why don’t you shut up Murry. Stop Crying. You lost. We won. We are repleaing Obamacare, not the ACA.” We could post more examples, but you get the point. Polls have repeatedly demonstrated that words matter – the healthcare law is viewed much more favorably as the ACA than as Obamacare.  And a number of insureds don’t realize they are one and the same.  We may soon have the dubious privilege of learning how widespread this confusion is.

Wendell Potter also thinks words matter, and opines that poor communication was among the factors that got us to this point of repeal/replace. At healthinsurance.org blog, he says that “lazy, superficial reporting” – and poor communication from the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats – has kept most Americans in the dark about how repeal of Obamacare would affect them. Potter runs down a list of the health coverage problems Americans faced before ACA implementation … as a preview of the problems that the GOP will resurrect if they can repeal the law. Check out Back from the Future. (A sequel we’ll all hate.)

At Managed Care Matters, Joe Paduda tries to clear up some of the miscommunication with a Q&A aimed right at the insured. Joe has been engaged in a series of posts aptly titled ACA Deathwatch. In his most recent post, he tackles what ACA repeal will mean to the consumer in a basic Q&A format. He looks at post-repeal life under replacement plans, tackling issues like what will happen to your cost, will pre-existing conditions be covered, will plans be inclusive of all conditions, etc.

At Health Affairs Blog, Joe Antos and Jim Capretta look at the The Problems with “Repeal and Delay”, warning that the most likely end result of repeal and delay would be less secure insurance for many Americans and procrastination by political leaders. They lay out the possible legislative scenario that this would follow and document the problems:

“To build a functioning marketplace, and to provide a ready path for all Americans to get health insurance, it is necessary to put together a coherent series of policies across Medicaid, employer-sponsored insurance, and the non-group insurance market. A workable plan will necessarily touch on all of these areas, and will be lengthy and politically contentious. That may not be ideal from a political perspective, but the alternative is incoherence and half-measures that will lead to a system that many Americans will view as worse than the ACA status quo.”

At Colorado Health Insurance Insider, Jay Norris offers a street level view of the level of scrutiny that all things ACA have been under in his post Connect for Health Colorado and the OIG Audit Report. Apparently, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) released an audit report (the full report is here) regarding Connect for Health Colorado’s use of federal start-up funding. This funding was provided for state-run exchanges to get their operations up and running in 2013 and 2014. A poorly worded title on the front page of the report, combined with clumsy explanations in the report gave the media and anti-ACA folks a lot to complain about. Jay dissects the details, asking whether at least some of this falls under the much ado about nothing category.

Of course, not everyone is a fan of Obamacare or we wouldn’t be engaged in these political brouhahas in the first place. In a post entitled Flatline at InsureBlog, Patrick Paule “pulls back the curtain on the fiasco known as Open Enrollment v4.0. Disappointing!”

We do have at least a few entries that aren’t focused on the fate of the Affordable Care Act.

At Health Care Renewal Blog, Roy Poses looks at Dr. Tom Price and finds him wanting, in his post Follow the Money: Nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services Traded Health Care Stocks and Owned Tobacco Stocks While in Congress. For the uninitiated, Roy is a longtime critic and caller-outer of conflicts of interest as they relate to physicians – something that he as a physician himself is fairly passionate about. He finds the current HHS nominee a little too cozy with big pharma, biotech, device companies and health insurers. But that’s just the least of what Dr. Roy finds objectionable … read up so you can be informed and ready for Tom Price’s cabinet hearing schnduled for January 18.

At Health Business Blog, David Williams says that concierge medicine is well-established in primary care, and now it’s coming to the specialties, too. Concierge pioneer Wayne Lipton explains how the “hybrid” model works and how primary care and specialty practices differ: Concierge Cardiology: podcast interview with Wayne Lipton.

At HealthBlawg, David Harlow ponders whether “Big Data” is too big to analyze productively – reasonable minds may differ. David draws some interesting analogies and concludes that computing power has indeed caught up with our data-generation runaway train. See: Of Borges and Big Data, Or: Is Big Data Too Big?

At Heatlh System Ed Blog, Peggy Salvatore finds bright spots for healthcare in the future, noting that no matter how the economy or politics turn, there are a few constants where people can have some control. Technological advances and wellness movements can help improve national health without increasing the cost of healthcare. See Healthcare’s Future: Population Health and Information Technology.

At The Healthcare Guys, Abhinav Shashank says that as eventful as last year was for the healthcare industry, expect a lot of surprises are in 2017, too. He cites the 21st Century Cures Act and MACRA as transformational legislation, and looks at potential trends and issues we are likely to see in the coming year. See: Healthcare 2017: What Does the New Year Have in Store?

At Healthcare Economist, Jason Shafrin brings us a great video short which reviews a recent publication in JAMA that details health care spending: Health Care Spending is Complicated.

Here at Workers Comp Insider, we forgo our own submission (OK, we’ve been goofing off in the new year) in favor of a post from our friends and colleagues at Work Comp Psych Net. We realize that workers comp is just a sliver of the overall healthcare budget, but we find it an important segment, dealing as it does with the health and safety of American workers. One thing that differs in the occupational arena is healthcare treatment is always working to an outcome, ideally a successful recovery and return to work after a work-related injury or illness. Mental health issues are often  impediments to a smooth recoveries because they are so often not factored in at all. Work Comp Psych Net sheds a light on progress in this area in the post Psychosocial Issues And How To Deal With Them.

Soapbox: As bloggers, we all enjoy speaking our mind.  As political discourse grows increasingly heated, we think it’s worth  this short PSA: Support the First Amendment and freedom of the press. Journalism isn’t free.  You can purchase great editorial cartoons like the one we use in this post at cagle.com. We’d also encourage supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists with donations. Journalists die for that freedom we enjoy.

Next issue: Jan. 25, 2017 – Joe Paduda – Managed Care Matters