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Natural News
Obamacare
causing massive wave of hospital closures across USA
Monday, December 29, 2014
by: J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) A number of acute-care hospitals closed across the United
States last year -- 18 to be exact -- and experts who see a raft of new
regulatory processes being heaped upon the healthcare industry in the
coming years, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, believe that a wave of
additional closures are ahead.
As noted by WorldNetDaily, a dozen more hospitals have closed in the
U.S. so far this year in rural areas alone; more are getting ready to
be shuttered. But Dr. Lee Hieb, M.D., says this is just the beginning.
"Events happening now give us some idea of what medicine will be
reduced to in the future," she wrote in her upcoming book, Surviving
the Medical Meltdown: Your Guide to Living Through the Disaster of
Obamacare, which is being published by WND Books.
"Today, all over America, small and midsize hospitals as well as
hospitals in inner-city, poor areas are closing," Hieb, an orthopedic
surgeon and past president of the Association of American Physicians
and Surgeons, wrote.
The cascade of closures has begun
Critics of the president's signature health "reform" law have long
complained that it would fundamentally change American healthcare
delivery -- from insurance to the doctor's office and everything in
between. Hieb, in her book, suggests that the number of hospitals
around the country will be dramatically reduced either because they
cannot afford the implementation costs of all of Obamacare's 2,400-plus
pages of regulations or because the law's higher out-of-pocket expenses
for the insured will lead them to seek less care.
As WND notes:
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 recent report at Modern Health Care, a healthcare business news site,
confirmed that just among critical access hospitals -- those with 25
beds or less -- there were 14 closures in 10 states in 2013.
Georgia's four closings last year were nothing new, according to Jimmy
Lewis, CEO of HomeTown Health, an organization of rural hospitals in
Georgia. "We have no clue how to stop it, it's so far gone," he told
Modern Health Care.
What's more, Hieb noted, the rates that federal agencies pay out when
reimbursing medical facilities and patients are not keeping pace with
the growth of healthcare costs (another broken Obamacare promise).
She says that "whereas private insurance might pay the surgeon $4,500
for a spinal surgery (my specialty), Medicare paid less than $1,200."
Regulations, under-payments to blame
Also, Hieb says the federal government -- the country's largest
consumer of healthcare services, bar none -- simply refuses to
reimburse hospitals for certain services, with bureaucrats deeming them
"not medically necessary," no matter 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 wrote. "The hospitals and offices
that will close are those with the least private insurance."
One of the cases she cites is that of Temple Community Hospital in Los
Angeles; it closed Sept. 9. Among the various reasons given by the
facility for its demise were "low reimbursement rates" and "regulatory
requirements."
Another facility that closed its doors recently was Vidant Pungo
Hospital, located in Belhaven, North Carolina; it shuttered July 1, the
only hospital in a small, economically depressed rural farming town.
In that instance, the hospital's closure left local doctors wondering
how their patients will get access to timely care, considering the long
distances to other hospitals. Further, residents were concerned about
what to do when they had a medical emergency, where to get lab tests
done and physical therapy.
Read this and other articles with sources at Natural
News
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