The Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare") is an elaborate scam, the most outrageous betrayal of public trust in history. It is a last ditch attempt to postpone the imminent collapse of Medicare, Medicaid, and the entire Third Party Payment system. It is designed to benefit insurance companies, the federal government, large corporate employers, cooperative professional and trade associations, and a bi-partisan gang of establishment politicians at the expense of everyone else.
The Affordable Care Act's disastrous web site rollout received significant media attention. There have been a few news stories about narrow networks and premium costs. However, there has been virtually no coverage of its devastating impact on the private practice of medicine or upon the resulting catastrophe that threatens to engulf thousands of hospitals and the communities they serve.
According to the American Hospital Association, there were 4,999 community hospitals in the U.S. as of January 2, 2014 of which 1,980 are small and rural. To learn how U.S. hospitals have fared financially since passage of The Affordable Care Act, we reviewed financial data for the 3,449 acute care and critical access community hospitals that had so far filed Medicare cost reports for the years 2011 through 2013.
Although the overwhelming majority of America's hospitals are non-profit organizations, they cannot survive if expenses are greater than income. America's community hospitals have experienced aggregate cumulative losses from operations of $10 billion dollars since ObamaCare was enacted! Those losses, by the way, were not confined to small rural hospitals. The next graph shows what has happened since 2010 to the bottom line of America's community hospitals.
America's hospitals are not the only casualties. For many small towns, the local hospital is the largest employer and for them the crisis is existential. The hospital provides most of the community's jobs, including the highest paying ones. Its payroll supports the community's grocery stores, retail shops, gas stations and other businesses. Those businesses, in turn, provide the tax base that sustains local government. In summary, the hospital's payroll is the engine that drives the local economy. If it dies, the community's economy dies with it!- ObamaCare does need to be repealed but it does not need to be replaced. The federal government needs to get out of the health care insurance business, regardless of the promises that RINOs have made to insurance companies and other large corporate donors.
- Our "broken immigration system" doesn't need to be "repaired" as much as it needs to be employed. Simply enforce existing immigration laws, aggressively prosecute employers who knowingly hire illegals, and deny illegals access to any federally-funded programs. Washington's decades-long politically correct approach not only encourages illegal immigration, it subsidizes it.
FJB
This site is not affiliated with any political party. Its goals are to advocate for individual liberty, traditional morality, and domestic peace and to resist all forms of tyranny and statism. It reflects the point of view of a life-long conservative constitutionalist and recovering Republican. If you are among the millions trying to understand what has happened to the GOP, please visit "Who Killed the Republican Party?" and read what is posted there. It may help explain things. Please bookmark this link, forward it to others, and return often. Thank you for your interest.
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