Johns Hopkins Medicine CEO: Obamacare Will Have “Catastrophic Effects” on Health-Care Safety-Net

Conn Carroll / December 07, 2009

Dean and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine Edward Miller writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Both the House and Senate health-care reform bills call for a large increase in Medicaid—about 18 million more people will begin enrolling in Medicaid under the House bill starting in 2013, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Actuary Richard Foster estimates.
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A flood of new patients will be seeking health services, many of whom have never seen a doctor on more than a sporadic basis. Some will also have multiple and costly chronic conditions. And almost all of them will come from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds.
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We’ll meet the demands placed on us because serving poor and disadvantaged populations is part of our century-old mission. But without an understanding by policy makers of what a large Medicaid expansion actually means, and without delivery-system reform and adequate risk-adjusted reimbursement the current health-care legislation will have catastrophic effects on those of us who provide society’s health-care safety-net. In time, those effects will be felt by all of us. (more…)