Poor Hospitals Hit Hardest By New ObamaCare Rule, Analysis Shows; You Have to Pass It to Know What's In It

And it gets worse for those hospitals with a lot of undocumented immigrants as patients too

MGM

An analysis by Kaiser Health News shows hospitals serving the highest proportion of poorer patients facing the largest reductions in Medicare reimbursement payments under a new rule penalizing hospitals that re-admit some patients within 30 days. The penalty maxes out at 1 percent. New Jersey's hospitals are hardest hit, with all but two in the state facing penalties. The average penalty for New Jersey is .67 percent, the highest in the Kaiser analysis.

Though the penalty is a low percentage, it will cost more than 2,000 hospitals nationwide a total of $280 million in its first year. That number is small fries compared to another ObamaCare rule that threatens up to $10 billion in funding by 2019 to the same kind of hospitals that service a larger amount of poor patients; that rule cuts in half current reimbursements to hospitals that treat uninsured patients, including illegal immigrants, who are also barred under ObamaCare from purchasing insurance through healthcare exchanges the laws sets up.

So it sounds like Nancy Pelosi was right, and Joe Wilson was wrong, though he pointed to $28.8 million going to 67 community centers nationwide as vindication that he wasn't.

Peter Suderman on June's Supreme Court ObamaCare ruling:

Comments

[Invisible Finger]

You have to pass it to know what's in it.

Like my shit.

[Rich]

Or that car up ahead.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The hospital industry has emphasized that poor patients are more likely to be readmitted, as they have a tougher time affording medications, often don't have access to doctors for check-ups and can have difficulty securing transportation to get follow-up care.

Poor people, they're good for electing central planners, but then they up and ruin the central plan!

[Episiarch]

"This isn't a central plan, it's an escape plan!"

"So long, suckers!"

[Auric Demonocles]

hat rule cuts in half current reimbursements to hospitals that treat uninsured patients,

What. The. Fuck.

The key to increasing access to healthcare... is to punish hospitals that provide healthcare to those unable to otherwise access it?

[Lord Humungus]

Intentions! INTENTIONS!

[John]

Well Hospitals not treating you if you are uninsured is a hell of an incentive to buy insurance isn't it?

It is almost as if this whole thing was a giant payoff to the insurance companies.

[RBS]

But I was told Obama went toe to toe with the insurance companies over this. Is it possible they were lying?

[wareagle]

no, not possible; it is certain they were lying.

[Invisible Finger]

Of course it is.

The two fractional-reserve businesses are banking and insurance. Banks got their bailout, this is the insurance racket's bailout.

[John]

Forgot the sarcasm tag.

[Jerry on the road]

It's a payoff in the short-run. All the current CEO's will get massive bonuses, but eventually they will run out of young healthy people to balance the risks. Of course mr. CEO is then enjoying his retirement.

[NoVAHockey]

the deal that hospitals made was they'd agree to cuts in their compensation for treating the uninsured in exchange for guarantees the numbers of uninsured will drop.

with the exchanges TBD and Medicaid expansion TBD, government is not holding its end of the deal. but the law says those cuts are happening regardless.

[John Thacker]

Yeah, that was clearly the deal. The hospitals were losing money on each of these patients anyway, so they figured as a whole that they could deal with losing more per person if the volume decreased.

Yet of course the hospitals that serve a greater fraction of the poor are worse off with this change, whereas ones that didn't serve a lot of uninsured do better.

[John Thacker]

Or rather, it depends on what fraction of the uninsured served by the hospital were, say, the supposedly healthy twentysomething invincibles versus, say, poor people, possibly illegal immigrants, in bad health.

[Rich]

penalizing hospitals that re-admit some patients within 30 days. The penalty maxes out at 1 percent.

I would "love" to witness the intellectual analyses and intellectual discussions that go into making this stuff law.

"'Forty-five days'? We can't have *that*!"

"No, but we can have another drink!"

"Oh, razzlefrats. Thirty it is, then."

[NoVAHockey]

if you can believe, there's was much debate on when and how to start the counting. when is day 1? when the discharged is ordered? day of discharge? discharge plus 1?

[Rich]

"OK, it's settled: 'Twenty-three hours after the', uh, wait. The discharge papers, do they have to be notarized?"

"How should I know? I think it's all electronic now, anyway."

"Shit. Strike that. 'Twenty-three hours after a time to be determined by the Discharge Officer appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services ....'"

[Chris Mallory]

Just like putting a tax on medical devices cuts medical costs.

[Mike M.]

Also that one episode of Mork Mindy

He was also outstanding in "Man Getting Hit By Football".

[BakedPenguin]

Ow! My groin!

[Mad Scientist]

Don't worry. When these hospitals run out of money and shut down due to Obamneycare penalties, their "customers" will be happy to blame the greedy capitalists.

[Mensan]

In addition to the penalty that the hospitals must pay, they also receive $0.00 reimbursement from Medicare for the second (or third, etc.) admission within 30 days. This aids in the inescapable positive feedback loop for care and outcomes at poor hospitals.

1. Poor hospitals cannot afford the best equipment or to pay competitive wages, so the best providers don't work there.

2. Patients get lower quality care leading to worse outcomes.

3. Due to the worse outcome, combined with the patients inability to afford medications and follow-up care, patients are readmitted within 30 days.

4. The hospitals are not paid for treatment and must pay a penalty to the government.

5. Poor hospitals cannot afford ... rinse, repeat, etc.

[Death Rock and Skull]

The poor will be getting even shittier, overpriced services as a result of more government interference in the medical market? This has been the source of the problem all along that insurance is even needed to pay for a lot of shit. Fuckin deregulate services for minor and routine services and cut down on the bullshit that insurance is required to cover.

[Calidissident]

But how can this be? Obamacare is all about helping people get more and better care while at the same time lowering prices. Tony told me so

[The Hammer]

Notice Tony is nowhere to be found in this thread.

[Episiarch]

Gabe, where've you been? On vacation in Fantasyland? Or did you go to Imaginationland this year?

[CuriousGeorge]

The libertarian "plan" isn't one in the traditional sense since we recognize the futility of centrally planned solutions to complicated problems.

[Contrarian P]

It certainly seemed to work pretty well up to the point where utopian planning started. But then, in your world, libertarians are selfish pricks and charity doesn't exist. In the world the rest of us live in, Americans are the most charitable people in the world and healthcare people are some of the most so. Of course, our ability to be charitable is limited by our government taking a large portion of our earnings to prop up an ineffective and supremely inefficient system that we can't afford.

[Episiarch]

Well, the stupid is an already known condition, but I bet we can add retarded too.

[SugarFree]

There is nothing so accurate as alliterative accuracy.

[BakedPenguin]

It might be the opposite - he might be calling us racist bikers, which means we can beat him with pool cues.

[Warty]

He's an idiot if he thinks I'm going to get back together with Layla.

[Enough About Palin]

"Now yous can't leave."

[Registration At Last!]

Let's
take
this
for
a
test
drive.
See
if
it
really
is
impossible
to
get
banned
around
here.

[The Hammer]

Who were you talking to?