Knee Replacement Surgery #1 Under Obamacare

Is anyone surprised?

After the Affordable Care Act went into effect a lot of Americans stopped limping. The most “preference-sensitive” procedure undergone by new subscribers to Obamacare was knee replacement surgery, according to a report by the Society of Actuaries.

A preference-sensitive procedure is defined by Dylan Scott, writing for National Journal, as one without which a patient can continue for some time. However, their quality of life can be greatly improved for patients who have the surgery.

“These results show how giving health insurance to people who lacked it before can improve their quality of life, ” said Larry Levitt, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

According to Scott, the authors of the report studied the newly insured in the state of Kansas, which they found has similar demographics to the United States as a whole. They found that getting more people on insurance has released pent-up demand for preference-sensitive procedures, which might cause rates to increase in the short term. While the actual number of knee replacements was relatively small and therefore not a statistically precise measure—it did offer a sense into where the pent-up demand is within the health care system.

They speculated that once the formerly uninsured get healthy, costs should stabilize. “Just because new enrollees used more services initially doesn’t mean that will necessarily be true looking ahead, ” Levitt said. “This study may give insurance regulators some evidence to push back on insurers that are proposing big rate increases for 2016 based on how much health care enrollees used in 2014.”