Obamacare and the state of the healthcare industry!
We attended a meeting yesterday where we heard a presentation from the CEO of the largest hospital group in southern Illinois. This man is staunchly anti government. He was not pleased with the reimbursement method used by Obamacare for hospitals. However, he seemed to agree with many of the things put in by the law that affect the way hospitals do business and interact with their patients. Even he realizes that we cannot go on doing health care in this nation the way that we have done it in the past, cost wise.
In the health arena involving the roll out of Obamacare via the website set up to enable the uninsured to choose among the options, USA Today reports that the company chosen to develop the website has had cost overruns almost triple what was originally estimated to develop the site and ended up installing technology that is almost a decade old. Reports state that almost ten million people tried to visit the site during the early days and the site only enrolled about thirty one thousand people so far. Reports have stated that a potential enroller may visit the site up to eighteen times before they finally make a choice of coverage. The local CEO is concerned that many will choose the lower cost plans with high deductibles and co insurance forcing the hospitals to have to cope with how to collect the balances from the patients. This particular hospital group is a non profit and accepts all patients regardless of their insurance and ability to pay. The CEO stated that last year they wrote off ninety million dollars of coverage that could not be collected.
The CEO stated that Obamacare will underpay the group about a quarter of a billion dollars over the next ten years with the reduced reimbursements. He also mentioned that he had lobbied against this recently and that who he called was a prominent Illinois political who told him that if they had screwed up the reimbursement part that they could fix that down the road. The CEO was not optimistic about that view given the state of affairs in the government these days.
The CEO also spoke about the potential shortage of doctors and nurses that may arise due to those who will take out insurance and seek care. He also spoke to the issue of emergency rooms and thought that many who could not find doctors for primary care would simply resort to the emergency rooms again as they have done in the past. He also stated that the cost of care has almost doubled over the past ten years, one of the many reasons that Obamacare came into being. He also stated that many previously hospitalized procedures were now being done on an outpatient basis. He stated that there was a rise in hospitalizations due to knee and hip replacements and that this was because of the aging population and the increase in the weight load on those knees and hips due to the rise in the overweight nature of the United States population. He stated that almost no doctors were opening up an independent practice any longer and were seeking affiliation with groups due to the heavy load caused by technological advances and the heavy requirements placed on them by regulations passed down from the insurance companies and the government.. He stated that for hospitals to remain viable and profitable into the future they were going to have to expand their range of services. He said that there were many consolidations going on in the hospital area as smaller operators were combining with larger ones to achieve more efficiencies. His group has recently set up an arrangement with a large St. Louis hospital that will aid in referrals out when this hospital cannot provide the advanced care needed. He also talked about the need to be more efficient in the purchasing process which is aided when smaller hospitals combine with larger ones to purchase more economically.
In general, this CEO was not happy with the financial side of Obamacare but was happy with the changes that it is forcing on the health care industry other wise. We were at our chiropractor the other day and he said that he had to take our blood pressure and record it because of Obamacare requirements.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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