Thanks to ACA, rural hospitals closing their doors.

[MaxGrit]

The closing of the rural hospitals is not entirely because of the ACA. And it isn't possible to draw that conclusion from the OP link unless one is extremely selective in one's vision.

Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement cuts are actually an ongoing part of the Republican budget in the 90s that supposedly were going to balance the budget. But ever since then, Congress has had to enact several "doc fix" bills to avoid those cuts.

The ACA is culpable in this situation in that it requires medical facilities to modernize. Electronic medical records and things of that nature. This is an expense out of reach of those hospitals who mostly provide service to Medicaid/Medicare patients.

It's a double whammy. If you serve mostly Medicaid/Medicare patients, you are already on a razor's edge because of the drive to reduce Medicaid/Medicare reimbursements, and then you are required to modernize under the ACA.

Not entirely because of the PPCA, but it is more complicated than having computerized record keeping. Very small hospitals can get 100% reimbursement, but if you go over a certain number of beds (25 I think), then every patient is treated at a loss. The PPACA also diverted funding away from subsidizing indigent treatment, so they no longer get a check for people who come in uninsured. They also just do not have the volume of insured patients to absorb the losses on no insurance/medicaid/medicare if they have more than the bed cliff.

 

[mudwhistle]

I predicted this:

"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."

"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."

"Low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements hurt these hospitals more than others because it's how most of their patients are insured, if they are at all. Here in Stewart County, it's a problem that expanding Medicaid to all of the poorest patients -– which the ACA intended but 23 states including Georgia have not done, according to the federal government — would help, but wouldn't solve.

"They set the whole rural system up for failure," says Jimmy Lewis, CEO of Hometown Health, an association representing rural hospitals in Georgia and Alabama, believed to be the next state facing mass closures. "Through entitlements and a mandate to provide service without regard to condition, they got us to (the highest reimbursements), and now they're pulling the rug out from under us."

Rural hospitals in critical condition

So what.

They probably vote Republican.

 

[Mustang]

I predicted this:

"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."

"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."

"Low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements hurt these hospitals more than others because it's how most of their patients are insured, if they are at all. Here in Stewart County, it's a problem that expanding Medicaid to all of the poorest patients -– which the ACA intended but 23 states including Georgia have not done, according to the federal government — would help, but wouldn't solve.

"They set the whole rural system up for failure," says Jimmy Lewis, CEO of Hometown Health, an association representing rural hospitals in Georgia and Alabama, believed to be the next state facing mass closures. "Through entitlements and a mandate to provide service without regard to condition, they got us to (the highest reimbursements), and now they're pulling the rug out from under us."

Rural hospitals in critical condition

While I have little doubt that hospitals have closed, I SERIOUSLY doubt that the ACA is the sole reason, or even the main reason, or perhaps even had anything to do at all with the reason why any or all of these hospitals have closed.

For one thing, hospitals close for a myriad of reasons. One reason is that they're old, and antiquated, and even because they're just plain dirty and have outlived their useful life. In such cases, new hospitals are built. Or perhaps a new hospital is built in a more central location where they can serve a population distribution that may be considerably different than when the other hospital was opened. Or one larger hospital may replace two older hospitals. Or a new hospital is built by a new healthcare organization that didn't even exist a couple of decades ago.

Whatever the reason or reasons are that specific hospitals close, I also have absolutely no doubt that some partisans will accuse the ACA in much the same way that Obama was blamed when antiquated coal-fired powered plants were eventually closed in favor of building newer and cleaner operating plants after those old plants had been repeatedly reauthorized to operate for decades past their originally planned operational life.

Frankly, this is old. It's like blaming every cancelled healthcare policy on the ACA when there was already a very high probability that people might be forced to choose a new policy prior to the beginning of every year under the system that existed prior to the ACA passing.

so why isn't that wunnerful ACA helping these hospitals survive in order to give access to good healthcare to EVERYONE.....like Obama said....?

I don't know when these hospitals were built. I can tell you that everything that's built, from power plants to shopping malls, have a projected useful lifespan. I've seen a structurally sound shopping mall in my area demolished to make way for a more modern shopping mall. Sometimes it was just because the mall sort of died as other newer ones in my metropolitan area siphoned off their business.

Car manufacturing operations have been closed to build newer and more technologically advanced plants. Perfectly good houses get torn down because people would rather build a newer house with bigger bathrooms and closets and more square footage as opposed to gutting an old house and replacing all the plumbing and wiring anyway only to be left with a house that doesn't fit their needs because the rooms are too small or because they don't feel that it had enough storage space.

That's the way it goes. Now, if you're a building contractor, demolishing something in favor of building something that's bigger and newer means more work and more money for you as opposed to just a little renovation. Sometimes it makes perfectly good economic sense, and sometimes it may just be a boondoggle. But I certainly don't think healthcare providers are going to close a hospital if it's still a money making operation. But often a newer and larger facility can serve to centralize operations and a lot of communities would look at a new facility as a great way to attract jobs to the area. In fact, my home town now boasts the largest hospital complex in more than a hundred miles in any direction and was expanded as opposed to building satellite clinics further away in outlying areas. It allowed the hospital to centralize its operations (no pun intended).

 

[NYcarbineer]

I predicted this:

"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."

"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."

"Low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements hurt these hospitals more than others because it's how most of their patients are insured, if they are at all. Here in Stewart County, it's a problem that expanding Medicaid to all of the poorest patients -– which the ACA intended but 23 states including Georgia have not done, according to the federal government — would help, but wouldn't solve.

"They set the whole rural system up for failure," says Jimmy Lewis, CEO of Hometown Health, an association representing rural hospitals in Georgia and Alabama, believed to be the next state facing mass closures. "Through entitlements and a mandate to provide service without regard to condition, they got us to (the highest reimbursements), and now they're pulling the rug out from under us."

Rural hospitals in critical condition

So low Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements are one of the causes?

lol, are you willing to have your taxes raised in order to raise those reimbursement rates, or would you rather the hospitals close?

 

[JakeStarkey]

ObamaCare was advertised as legislation which would reduce the per capita cost of health care in America. That was the bait.

In this, it has utterly failed.

What ObamaCare actually achieves is the redistribution of those costs, largely from the unproductive members of our society onto the backs of the productive members of our society. That was the switch.

One third of the "involuntarily insured" in America are high school dropouts. These are the people whose costs are being redistributed to the more productive members of our society.

In one of the most Orwellian turns in the history of American political debate, the supporters of ObamaCare have attempted to portray those who will have to cough up their money in order to support the high school dropouts as "freeloaders".

The insurance mandate is critical to the survival of ObamaCare. The insurance mandate is the means by which productive people are forced to overpay in order to pay for the insurance of high school dropouts. This is the redistribution of cost under ObamaCare.

ObamaCare was a classic "bait-and-switch" con job.

Well, that's your opinion, anyway.

No, it is the reality.

If you say so.

 

[Roadrunner]

Yes, we know. You people want to congregate the masses in compounds located in cities, and take over the vast tracts of land that you force them to evacuate.

It isn't going to happen.

You don't know how the Appalachian Trail was created, do you?

It isn't going to happen it has already happened all over the South as National Forests were created.

The woods here used to have lots of old cabins, but, they are getting harder to find as the USFS destroys them to plant pine plantations for Big Lumber.

 

[g5000]

ObamaCare was advertised as legislation which would reduce the per capita cost of health care in America. That was the bait.

In this, it has utterly failed.

What ObamaCare actually achieves is the redistribution of those costs, largely from the unproductive members of our society onto the backs of the productive members of our society. That was the switch.

One third of the "involuntarily insured" in America are high school dropouts. These are the people whose costs are being redistributed to the more productive members of our society.

In one of the most Orwellian turns in the history of American political debate, the supporters of ObamaCare have attempted to portray those who will have to cough up their money in order to support the high school dropouts as "freeloaders".

The insurance mandate is critical to the survival of ObamaCare. The insurance mandate is the means by which productive people are forced to overpay in order to pay for the insurance of high school dropouts. This is the redistribution of cost under ObamaCare.

ObamaCare was a classic "bait-and-switch" con job.

Well, that's your opinion, anyway.

No, it is the reality.

If you say so.

Are per capita costs going down?

Nope.

Did liberals frequenlty make explicit references to per capita spending during the debates prior to the enactment of the ACA?

Yep.

Is the continuing rising cost of health care being redistributed through subsidies and increasing Medicaid rolls?

Yep.

Are taxpayers going to have to pay for all those subsidies and Medicaid enrollees, much of which is going to high school dropouts?

Yep.


Bait and switch.

Welcome to reality.

 

[Roadrunner]

The closest hospital where my last child was born closed in 2005 and reopened in 2012...it is only 13 miles down the road...

Gee, thanks for the update. Jesus, where the hell do you live.. 13 miles to the nearest hospital? I have two majors and God only knows how many urgent care clinics within 5.

We have had health CARE for the poor since before FDR bumped off Huey Long.

It is a state problem that should be handled by states.

 

[healthmyths]

that was the intention of OScamCare

to hurt us in every way they could think of.

No the undercurrent agenda from obama is what he said:"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.”
Because Obama is so dumb economically he has NO IDEA that to accomplish "SINGLE PAYER" means dissolving 1,300 companies that pay over
$100 billion a year in Federal, some in your state income taxes, some in your city property taxes on their buildings and he wants 400,000 people out of work that work for these companies!
How dumb...
There NEVER has been a "health care crisis"!
What has happened is insurance companies get $850 billion a year in 'defensive medicine" claims and they pay 95% of all claims.
Defensive medicine is because the physician as this study shows fears getting sued!
And the facts back this up!
Proof is 90% of physicians surveyed say they order $850 billion a year in wasted duplicate tests, referrals all out of FEAR of being SUED!
Physicians estimate the cost of defensive medicine in US at $650 to $850 billion per year
Emergency medicine, primary care, and OB/GYN physicians are most likely to practice defensive medicine.
79 to 83% of surgeons and OB/GYNs have been named in lawsuits.
BUT NOTE this: "Physicians contracted by the federal government practice significantly less defensive medicine as they are protected against lawsuits by the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Only 48% practice defensive medicine compared to 92% of non-government physicians.
89% of physicians support a patient’s right to be compensated fairly for true negligence.
SOURCE: Health News Observer rsaquo Physicians Estimate The Cost Of Defensive Medicine In Us At 650 To 850 Bill Articles
Do you understand what that means? If you can't sue a Federal employee Doctor then these doctors do practice defensive medicine as they have
to do with non federal practices.
As a result... $850 billion a year is paid by insurance companies and therefore the companies pass on this increasing amount in form of increased premiums!

 

[NYcarbineer]

Gee, I'm so glad I took the time to point out that Obamacare has nothing to do with rural hospital closings; otherwise, the sane among us wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to be entertained by watching the RWnuts plow ahead, blissfully oblivious to the facts.

 

[koshergrl]

I predicted this:

"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."

"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."

"Low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements hurt these hospitals more than others because it's how most of their patients are insured, if they are at all. Here in Stewart County, it's a problem that expanding Medicaid to all of the poorest patients -– which the ACA intended but 23 states including Georgia have not done, according to the federal government — would help, but wouldn't solve.

"They set the whole rural system up for failure," says Jimmy Lewis, CEO of Hometown Health, an association representing rural hospitals in Georgia and Alabama, believed to be the next state facing mass closures. "Through entitlements and a mandate to provide service without regard to condition, they got us to (the highest reimbursements), and now they're pulling the rug out from under us."

Rural hospitals in critical condition

While I have little doubt that hospitals have closed, I SERIOUSLY doubt that the ACA is the sole reason, or even the main reason, or perhaps even had anything to do at all with the reason why any or all of these hospitals have closed.

For one thing, hospitals close for a myriad of reasons. One reason is that they're old, and antiquated, and even because they're just plain dirty and have outlived their useful life. In such cases, new hospitals are built. Or perhaps a new hospital is built in a more central location where they can serve a population distribution that may be considerably different than when the other hospital was opened. Or one larger hospital may replace two older hospitals. Or a new hospital is built by a new healthcare organization that didn't even exist a couple of decades ago.

Whatever the reason or reasons are that specific hospitals close, I also have absolutely no doubt that some partisans will accuse the ACA in much the same way that Obama was blamed when antiquated coal-fired powered plants were eventually closed in favor of building newer and cleaner operating plants after those old plants had been repeatedly reauthorized to operate for decades past their originally planned operational life.

Frankly, this is old. It's like blaming every cancelled healthcare policy on the ACA when there was already a very high probability that people might be forced to choose a new policy prior to the beginning of every year under the system that existed prior to the ACA passing.

so why isn't that wunnerful ACA helping these hospitals survive in order to give access to good healthcare to EVERYONE.....like Obama said....?

I don't know when these hospitals were built. I can tell you that everything that's built, from power plants to shopping malls, have a projected useful lifespan. I've seen a structurally sound shopping mall in my area demolished to make way for a more modern shopping mall. Sometimes it was just because the mall sort of died as other newer ones in my metropolitan area siphoned off their business.

Car manufacturing operations have been closed to build newer and more technologically advanced plants. Perfectly good houses get torn down because people would rather build a newer house with bigger bathrooms and closets and more square footage as opposed to gutting an old house and replacing all the plumbing and wiring anyway only to be left with a house that doesn't fit their needs because the rooms are too small or because they don't feel that it had enough storage space.

That's the way it goes. Now, if you're a building contractor, demolishing something in favor of building something that's bigger and newer means more work and more money for you as opposed to just a little renovation. Sometimes it makes perfectly good economic sense, and sometimes it may just be a boondoggle. But I certainly don't think healthcare providers are going to close a hospital if it's still a money making operation. But often a newer and larger facility can serve to centralize operations and a lot of communities would look at a new facility as a great way to attract jobs to the area. In fact, my home town now boasts the largest hospital complex in more than a hundred miles in any direction and was expanded as opposed to building satellite clinics further away in outlying areas. It allowed the hospital to centralize its operations (no pun intended).

Many of them came into existence after Bush doubled federal financing for community health centers.

"President Bush leaves office with a health care legacy in bricks and mortar: he has doubled federal financing for community health centers, enabling the creation or expansion of 1,297 clinics in medically underserved areas."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/health/policy/26clinics.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

[koshergrl]

"In Mr. Bush’s first year in office, he proposed to open or expand 1,200 clinics over five years (mission accomplished) and to double the number of patients served (the increase has ended up closer to 60 percent). With the health centers now serving more than 16 million patients at 7,354 sites, the expansion has been the largest since the program’s origins in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty, federal officials said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/health/policy/26clinics.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

[NoTeaPartyPleez]

I predicted this:

"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."

"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."

"Low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements hurt these hospitals more than others because it's how most of their patients are insured, if they are at all. Here in Stewart County, it's a problem that expanding Medicaid to all of the poorest patients -– which the ACA intended but 23 states including Georgia have not done, according to the federal government — would help, but wouldn't solve.

"They set the whole rural system up for failure," says Jimmy Lewis, CEO of Hometown Health, an association representing rural hospitals in Georgia and Alabama, believed to be the next state facing mass closures. "Through entitlements and a mandate to provide service without regard to condition, they got us to (the highest reimbursements), and now they're pulling the rug out from under us."

Rural hospitals in critical condition

Nice, but not true. Small hospitals and many physicians have been shuttering their doors to the corporatization of health care. Now the admins and officers of these corporations are making more than the docs. These problems started lonngggg before the ACA passed last year. Time for you to catch up with reality.

 

[koshergrl]

Oh, okay. If you say so. I'll just disregard what the clinic admins and all the other people say, because obviously, you're much better informed.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

The closest hospital where my last child was born closed in 2005 and reopened in 2012...it is only 13 miles down the road...

Gee, thanks for the update. Jesus, where the hell do you live.. 13 miles to the nearest hospital? I have two majors and God only knows how many urgent care clinics within 5.

I recently lived in one of the poorest counties in the state, where the nearest hospital was 200 miles away.

no you didnt

And you're also right that she didn't "predict anything".

But, I'm about 30 miles away from a hospital and its farther than to an urgent care facility.

 

[NYcarbineer]

"In Mr. Bush’s first year in office, he proposed to open or expand 1,200 clinics over five years (mission accomplished) and to double the number of patients served (the increase has ended up closer to 60 percent). With the health centers now serving more than 16 million patients at 7,354 sites, the expansion has been the largest since the program’s origins in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty, federal officials said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/health/policy/26clinics.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

So you're praising Bush for spending tax payer dollars on socialized medicine?

lolol

 

[gallantwarrior]

It's working!!

Farms are run by machines which can easily be automated.

Two generation, rural America won't need hospitals, because there will be no people.

We just have to convince them to not have kids.

Oh, goodie! Two generations and we'll have no food. Well, no food = no people, so I guess you're right. Or are you one of these modern morons who believes that food comes in those Styrofoam packages at the supermarket?

 

[gallantwarrior]

"The Obama administration anticipated that cuts in subsidies for treating large numbers of people who can’t pay for medical care would be balanced by more low-income patients being covered by Medicaid. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year allowed states to decide whether to expand Medicaid to individuals making as much as 133 percent of the federal poverty level. Half have said they would.

The hospital closures and service reductions are a setback for President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."

"Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, said governors who chose not to expand Medicaid are to blame for the hospital closures."

Obamacare Cutbacks Shut Hospitals Where Medicaid Went Unexpanded - Bloomberg

The states that can't afford to INCREASE Medicaid are penalized. They are the poorest states, and the people who are punished are the poorest people.

People that progs think should die quickly, and without making a sound.

But...but...but, who would vote them back into office if all the poorest and most dependent on the government dole die off?

 

[gallantwarrior]

"Dismemberment of the U.S. hospital system is on course as Obamacare and its prime author, Dr. "EZ Kill" Ezekiel Emanuel, prescribe. Already, in 2013 nearly 60,000 hospital workers were laid off, and now in just the first three months of 2014 another 7,500 hospital jobs have been slashed across the country, while 4,000 hospital workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee have a freeze on sick leave and time off pay. In each instance the cut in reimbursements to hospitals under Obamacare was cited as a core cause for the layoffs.

"Hospital closures are also hitting, especially in rural areas. Just as Obama's hatchet man Dr. "EZ Kill" declaimed on Feb. 24, "We don't need 5,000 hospitals," hospitals and/or their units, such as trauma centers, emergency rooms, and labor & delivery rooms, are being shuttered."

Dr. EZ Kill, lol....

ObamaCare is Death Knell for U.S. Hospitals

Oh, hell...who cares? Rural areas are where most inhabitants are clinging to their Bibles and guns, anyway. Bastards need to go!

 

[koshergrl]

"The Obama administration anticipated that cuts in subsidies for treating large numbers of people who can’t pay for medical care would be balanced by more low-income patients being covered by Medicaid. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year allowed states to decide whether to expand Medicaid to individuals making as much as 133 percent of the federal poverty level. Half have said they would.

The hospital closures and service reductions are a setback for President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."

"Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, said governors who chose not to expand Medicaid are to blame for the hospital closures."

Obamacare Cutbacks Shut Hospitals Where Medicaid Went Unexpanded - Bloomberg

The states that can't afford to INCREASE Medicaid are penalized. They are the poorest states, and the people who are punished are the poorest people.

People that progs think should die quickly, and without making a sound.

But...but...but, who would vote them back into office if all the poorest and most dependent on the government dole die off?

Who indeed.