Dr. Yu expounds on Affordable Care Act

Related Photos

Dr. Tae Yu -Photo: Joyce Marie Taylor

Discussion

October 18, 2012

Dr. Yu expounds on Affordable Care Act

Joyce Marie Taylor Suwannee Democrat The Suwannee Democrat Thu Oct 18, 2012, 12:00 PM EDT

Mayo — Dr. Tae Yu, D.O. from Doctors’ Memorial Family Medicine in Mayo has taken the time to read through the 2,000 page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and he had some thoughts and opinions to share with the public and the citizens of Lafayette County.

The ACA, commonly referred to as “Obamacare”, was signed into law on March 23, 2010 by President Barack Obama.

Ever since Yu decided on a medical career, he said his main focus has been rural healthcare. He even went on mission trips to Guatemala, Haiti and Jamaica while in medical school.

Yu attended the University of Florida as an undergraduate and then went on to Nova Southeastern University for medical training before heading to The Medical Center in Columbus, Ga. for his training and internship. He came to Doctors’ Memorial Hospital in Mayo in 2010 and is on staff at their brand new facility on US 27. The grand opening of that facility was Jan. 12.

As for the ACA, Yu said it has great intentions by ensuring that everyone has health insurance. The program also eliminates pre-existing conditions exclusions, there is no gender bias, it will reduce Medicare spending and will even insure immigrants.

“That’s a very touchy subject,” he said. “My wife is from Houston and she lived in an area of Houston where literally, I would say every other person is illegal.”

Yu said current estimates are that there are 48 million Americans who are uninsured, plus another 20 million uninsured immigrants, which he believes is extremely underestimated.

“Over a 10 year trend they’re saying it’s going to cost about 1.16 trillion for the uninsured,” said Yu. “The number’s been revised numerous times, but that’s the latest number that they have.”

The funding for the ACA is where the controversy exists, Yu said. It proposes to include cuts to Medicare reimbursements to doctors, a decrease in testing for pap smears, mammograms and prostate exams, taxing certain businesses like tanning salons, taxing the uninsured, penalizing employers, increased tax revenues from death and estate taxes up to 55 percent, removing tax benefits from IRA’s, and increasing Medicaid deductibles, which Yu believes will increase abuse of the program.

As an example, he said, if a person has Medicaid and their shared cost is a $1,000 monthly deductible, that person will go to the emergency room for one visit and rack up a fictitious $1,000 worth of charges, then they don’t pay that bill, and now they can go see a family doctor and not have to pay for services.

“We see that abuse going on all the time with the shared cost,” said Yu.

If funding for the ACA is going to include increased monthly deductibles for Medicaid shared cost patients, Yu said that will be even more money that doctors and hospitals will lose because of even more unnecessary and false emergency room visits just to rack up the deductible amount, so the patient can go see a private physician. It will happen every month, he added.

“The system is so broken the way they’ve come up with all of this,” he said.

Another thing Yu foresees is that 30-50 percent of medical specialists will plan to retire when the ACA goes into effect because part of the plan includes decreasing reimbursements to them.

“The ones that are going to retire aren’t going to be the ones who just came out of training,” said Yu.

Those that will retire are the ones who have been in their specialty field for years; the ones with all the knowledge and experience, he added.

Additionally, with projected senior citizen growth at 55 million people by the year 2022, Yu doesn’t understand why Medicare funding is being reduced. With more illegal immigrants who may be allowed amnesty and citizenship, they too will be afforded insurance, which will be another tax burden. A more complicated tax code system will have to be implemented, as well, he said.

“They’ve already hired over 10,000 IRS agents to implement this ACA,” Yu said. “I’ve seen more and more burden on this paperwork and implementation.”

The annual budget deficit of $1.2 trillion, Yu said, could probably be cut in half by just giving all uninsured people $5,000 each in healthcare benefits.

Yu said the ACA is modeled after current VA and Medicaid programs.

Text Only

Home

Search Results

Related Photos

Discussion

Dr. Yu expounds on Affordable Care Act

School’s out soon. What are your summer plans for the kids

Site Map

Contact Us