The Justa and Lars Honors Bob Brinker Investment Club Thread Message Board

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Pastimes : The Justa and Lars Honors Bob Brinker Investment Club Thread

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Jan 28 4:00 PM EST

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To: Kirk © who wrote (5654)	10/1/2010 10:18:59 PM
From: marc ultra	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) of 10065

<will this affect health care stocks or will Obammacare allow insurance companies, hospitals and MDs to CONTINUE running up huge bills on the public for useless procedures similar to how medicare fraud operates? Medicine in general has moved in the direction to what's called evidence-based medicine. I'll give the Wikepedia definition because it's a good one: [Evidence-based medicine (EBM) or Evidence-based practice (EBP) aims to apply the best available evidence gained from the scientific method to clinical decision making. It seeks to assess the strength of evidence of the risks and benefits of treatments (including lack of treatment) and diagnostic tests.] It's really just proper medical practice based on available data so theoretically obamacare shouldn't make a big difference but it might help. Part of it I think includes an expert panel that reviews the latest data and it will either just be out there as information or it will likely also guide what medicare pays for in the future. This is the kind of thing that can also get political like a while back when a government panel questioned the benefit of getting mammograms below a certain age which had a sound scientific basis but was jumped on by the right as how Obamacare will deny health care. So most of this is just good medicine and Obamacare should be fairly consistent with that. I think I would have more discomfort about this if we really were going to some true single payer government run health care system because if you give a bureaucracy too much concentrated power over life and death medical decisions that does seem scary to me. The way things are written now I think insurance companies are likely to continue to give people a lot more trouble than anything the government does as most for-profit ones are set up to make maximum profits which can lead to denying valid claims or care So I can't say how all of this will come out but any entity whether just good medical practice or some part of Obamacare that puts an emphasis on best practices based on what clinical trials and thus evidence-based medicne suggest should be overall beneficial to medical care. Hospitals that adopt such protocols voluntarily and even have checklists of e.g. what medications someone with a certain disease should be on when they get treated or discharged have been shown to have better outcomes and be cost effective. In terms of how it will effect healthcare stocks it should be a very mixed bag but again to the extent a company is doing things or manufacturing devices that is supported by the evidence that should do OK. If you make something that's used e.g. in some back surgeries that don't help people then to the extent that Obamacare favors best practices then it may not be good but it's very hard to generalize and you're always balancing that out with all the new people that will supposedly be entering the system. In terms of doing stenting in cases when it's not supported by clinical trials that should be another example where Obamacare should tend to push providers to do what they should be doing anyway and on balance that will likely moderate health care costs. The trend I mentioned before that health care inflation seems to be moderating still appears to be happening. When people lose their jobs or insurance and have to take more responsibility for paying medical bills they seem to use less. It will be interesting if this can remain the case when the economy improves. Also hopefully people won't go to extremes where they end up costing more because they avoid medical care until they have some horrible costly problem. Just having insurance under Obamacare or otherwise should help avoid that extreme. Like Medicare etc. this will all get tweaked with time and things like that McDonalds issue will be taken care of with waivers and tweaking the law. You know politically the administration will do what it can to make sure the law works because they know attack dogs are watching.

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