Obamacare is forcing the closure of small rural hospitals nationwide
Finding out what’s in it: The regulations imposed by Obamacare have raised costs so much that dozens of small rural hospitals, generally serving poorer communities, have been forced to close.
Since the beginning of 2010, 43 rural hospitals — with a total of more than 1,500 beds — have closed, according to data from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. The pace of closures has quickened: from 3 in 2010 to 13 in 2013, and 12 already this year. Georgia alone has lost five rural hospitals since 2012, and at least six more are teetering on the brink of collapse. Each of the state’s closed hospitals served about 10,000 people — a lot for remaining area hospitals to absorb.
The Affordable Care Act was designed to improve access to health care for all Americans and will give them another chance at getting health insurance during open enrollment starting this Saturday. But critics say the ACA is also accelerating the demise of rural outposts that cater to many of society’s most vulnerable. These hospitals treat some of the sickest and poorest patients — those least aware of how to stay healthy. Hospital officials contend that the law’s penalties for having to re-admit patients soon after they’re released are impossible to avoid and create a crushing burden.
The article also describes how the high cost converting all hospital records from paper to electronic, something that Obamacare requires, is also forcing the shut down of these hospitals.
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Finding out what’s in it: The regulations imposed by Obamacare have raised costs so much that dozens of small rural hospitals, generally serving poorer communities, have been forced to close.
Since the beginning of 2010, 43 rural hospitals — with a total of more than 1,500 beds — have closed, according to data from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. The pace of closures has quickened: from 3 in 2010 to 13 in 2013, and 12 already this year. Georgia alone has lost five rural hospitals since 2012, and at least six more are teetering on the brink of collapse. Each of the state’s closed hospitals served about 10,000 people — a lot for remaining area hospitals to absorb.
The Affordable Care Act was designed to improve access to health care for all Americans and will give them another chance at getting health insurance during open enrollment starting this Saturday. But critics say the ACA is also accelerating the demise of rural outposts that cater to many of society’s most vulnerable. These hospitals treat some of the sickest and poorest patients — those least aware of how to stay healthy. Hospital officials contend that the law’s penalties for having to re-admit patients soon after they’re released are impossible to avoid and create a crushing burden.
The article also describes how the high cost converting all hospital records from paper to electronic, something that Obamacare requires, is also forcing the shut down of these hospitals.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
On the use of words and their actual meaning:
I think the problems is that politicians and us “regular” people who pay for everything and who’s freedoms those politicians are in the process of confiscating use different dictionaries to define the words in the sentences that we use to explain what it is that we are attempting to communicate.
For example the word TRANSPARENT apparently means that the politicians that use words can say what ever they want and tell you afterwords that you miss heard them or that what was actually meant was miss understood by the people.
Or when the president uses the words “you will be able to keep your doctor” or “a family’s yearly healthcare costs will be reduced by $2500 dollars”
actually means that you will have to use the doctors that your insurance company or the government say you have to use and that your costs for healthcare will actually double.
Or when the president says that a person “was not a member of his staff” but he was a highly paid consultant who’s models were directly used to develop the ACA (OBAMACARE)
“While Gruber was not a staffer, he was a paid consultant whose models were used to help assess the impact of various policy changes being considered as part of health care legislation. Official logs show he visited the White House about a dozen times between 2009 and this year.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/barack-obama-health-care-112930.html#ixzz3JFS5wLv2
Or when a law is written, represented and defended as a penalty but judged and rewritten to be a tax by a certain Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
So yes WE THE PEOPLE have a problem, it is our responsibility to correct the “mistaken” (read, how lawyers are trained to lie) way that politicians use the English language. Words actually mean what their definitions are and when they are used to create sentences to communicate ideas and concepts you will be held accountable for the words that you use in those sentences.
And when you use words to deceive “the stupid American public”, as Mr. Gruber so inconveniently revealed you will pay a heavy price when “the stupid” give their feedback at the ballot box. That is how we get on the same page and begin using the same dictionary.