JANUARY 19, 2012
\nby Chloe Kowalski ’12, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n
Nine hundred and eighty-three billion dollars. That is the estimated overall cost of the Affordable Healthcare Act, but don\u2019t panic. This act will not only pay for itself, but it will also save Americans money, at least according to Anton Gunn, Region Four Director in the Department of Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday night, Gunn, a native of South Carolina, spoke to a packed house of students and\u00a0community members gathered in the Watkins Room.\u00a0Brought by the Riley Institute, the former South Carolina representative said that his new position requires him to explain the\u00a0nation\u2019s new Affordable Healthcare Act to\u00a0the Southeast region.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0region is often referred to as the top of everything bad, and the bottom of everything good, since it has\u00a0the highest national rates of obesity, heart disease, and\u00a0rural and elderly populations.<\/p>\n
These statistics do not hinder Gunn\u2019s faith in the new legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen God was handing out optimism, he gave me a double portion because I see Region Four as having the most opportunity for positive change,\u201d Gunn asserted. \u201cThe Affordable Healthcare Act is the most transformative piece of legislation we\u2019ve had in this country in the last 45 years, since the passage of Medicare.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Gunn, the Affordable Healthcare Act\u00a0recovers money by cracking down on fraud. Schemes of organized crime are able to steal millions of dollars a year from Medicare funds. To combat\u00a0this problem, the act increases penalties and abilities to investigate fraud. Last year alone, after investing $35 million, $4 billion was recovered from fraud cases. The previous year, Gunn noted that more than\u00a0$2 billion had been saved.<\/p>\n
The crime-fighting side is exciting enough, but Gunn offered other\u00a0arguments for the benefits of the healthcare plan. First, it expands coverage to people who don\u2019t have any by lowering costs, eliminating pre-existing condition discrimination, and creating legislation to provide more access.<\/p>\n
Second, the act makes healthcare more affordable by expanding coverage to pay for services that were once mostly out-of-pocket payments.<\/p>\n
Third, Gunn said, the act improves quality by increasing communication and opening doors for hospitals to provide better care. Additionally,\u00a0choices and information about those options will be more readily available and transparent.<\/p>\n
Gunn also said\u00a0that the new law will focus on prevention to promote our country\u2019s overall health and wellness. Stopping problems before they start,\u00a0he said, is the ultimate step in lowering costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a perfect piece of legislation by any measure, but it does provide a good foundation to begin lowering costs, improving quality, providing more access, and providing better lifestyles of overall quality,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JANUARY 19, 2012
\nby Chloe Kowalski ’12<\/p>\n
Nine hundred and eighty-three billion dollars. That is the estimated overall cost of the Affordable Healthcare Act, but don\u2019t panic. This act will not only pay for itself, but it will also save Americans money, at least according to Anton Gunn, Region Four Director in the Department of Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-politics-and-international-affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}