Posts Tagged ‘Eric Ford’
GUEST POST: We Are Just Beginning To Understand the Effect of the Individual Mandate
The following guest post was written by Eric Ford, the Forsyth Medical Center Distinguished Professor of Health Care at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Prior to his current position, Ford was the director of Texas Tech’s Health Care Organization Management Program and the Center for Health Innovation, Education and Research. Ford is a graduate of Cornell University and earned his Ph.D. in Administration from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
With the pending Supreme Court decision on the federal health reform law looming, the potential impact of the personal insurance mandate at the core of the case remains controversial. Advocates of the overhaul believe that the health insurance mandate will lead to cost savings through better care coordination leading to reduced hospitalization costs in particular. This phenomenon is often referred to as “bending the cost curve.” However, a recent study in the journal Health Care Management Review found that Massachusetts hospitals’ productivity was adversely impacted by the individual mandate, relative to comparable facilities in other states with no such requirements.
