|
REPLY TO THREAD
|
|
Subject
|
OBAMACARE BLAMED FOR KILLING HOSPITALS Closures by the multitude seen as danger to patients, harbinger of future
|
|
User Name
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Font color:
Font:
|
|
|
|
|
|
Original Message
|
OBAMACARE BLAMED FOR KILLING HOSPITALS
Closures by the multitude seen as danger to patients, harbinger of future
Eighteen acute-care hospitals across the United States shut their doors in 2013.At least 12 more hospitals have closed this year in rural areas alone. More are getting out the plywood to nail over windows and barricades for doors.
Don’t worry, it’s just the new normal under Obamacare, says Lee Hieb, M.D.“Events happening now give us some idea of what medicine will be reduced to in the future,” Hieb writes in her forthcoming book, “Surviving the Medical Meltdown: Your Guide to Living Through the Disaster of Obamacare.
”“Today, all over America, small and midsize hospitals as well as hospitals in inner-city, poor areas are closing,” she said.Hieb is an orthopedic surgeon and past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.She said the reasons for the closures aren’t complicated. Most of the victims are smaller hospitals or those in poor areas, which often serve the greatest number of Medicare and Medicaid patients.
A report at Modern Health Care just a few weeks ago confirmed that among just the critical-access hospitals, which have 25 beds or fewer, there were 14 closures in 10 states in 2013.
And the federal bureaucracies that set reimbursement rates for needy patients simply aren’t keeping up with the costs, she said.Hieb writes that “whereas private insurance might pay the surgeon $4,500 for a spinal surgery (my specialty), Medicare paid less than $1,200.”In addition, she says the federal government refuses to pay hospitals for certain services, deeming them “not medically necessary,” regardless of what doctors and patients say.
“The result is predictable: economic failure of hospitals and physician practices that have become dependent on government payment for large segments of their population,” Hieb writes. “The hospitals and offices that will close are those with the least private insurance.
Read more at [link to www.wnd.com]
|
|
Pictures (click to insert)
|
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | | | Next Page >> |
|
