07/27/2016    Adam Siegel, DPM

What overall grade would you give the Affordable Care Act? (Rich Hofacker. DPM)

I know Dr. Hofacker is being humorous with his
rhetorical question about who could possibly
could be stupid or high enough to give the ACA
a grade A, but I do want to give some insight
as to why I am one of those 11 “stupid/high”
people who graded it “A.” The question asked
simply “What overall grade would you give the
Affordable Care Act?” Notice it did not say,
“Based upon your experience in private
practice, what overall grade…”.

This is an important distinction because I am
one of hundreds of thousands of people/patients
who view the ACA as a lifesaver. Although the
ACA has been a burden on private practice
(granted, not enough to grade the ACA an F,
which the majority of the readership seemed to
have graded it), the program has had
considerable benefits to many outside of
Podiatry Land.

I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease 13 years
ago at the ripe age of 17. This disease is
chronic. There is no cure. As a result, I am on
life-long medications to manage my symptoms.
One medication, Remicade, has been around since
the early 1990’s, but still costs $23,000 per
infusion (that is the price my insurance pays,
mind you). I have six of these infusions each
year. That’s $138,000 per year or $1.8 million
since I was diagnosed. This does not even take
into account my surgeries, procedures, and
other medications.

Thanks to the ACA, there no longer is a
lifetime maximum, something that is beneficial
to people like me with chronic conditions. In
addition, there no longer are pre-existing
condition exclusions for private insurances.
This exclusion has been a tremendous burden on
people, like me, who worry about losing their
health insurance through no fault of their own.
Does the ACA have its problems? Of course it
does, but we as practitioners must remember
that there is more to life than practice
revenue and politics.

Adam Siegel, DPM, Chicago, IL

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