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Patient Faces Bankruptcy After Ambulance Takes Her To Out-Of-Network Hospital

chatham

Nov 12 2014, 10:44 PM

And John Kerry knew about the lies. In fact he put one lie in place. It was his idea to tax the insurers instead of the people. They knew the insurance companies would pass that cost to the buyer.

LTC8K6

Nov 12 2014, 11:13 PM

http://consumerist.com/2014/11/12/patient-faces-bankruptcy-after-ambulance-takes-her-to-out-of-network-hospital/

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Patient Faces Bankruptcy After Ambulance Takes Her To Out-Of-Network Hospital

Just reminder if you get sick away from your network:

https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-limit/

Baldo

Nov 12 2014, 11:27 PM

WaPo

GOP’s anti-Obamacare push gains new momentum in wake of Gruber video

The Republican Party’s ardent campaign against President Obama’s health-care law gained new momentum Wednesday as lawmakers reacted angrily to assertions by an architect of the policy that it was crafted in a deliberately deceptive way in order to pass Congress.

On both sides of the Capitol, leading conservatives said they may call economist Jonathan Gruber to testify about his remarks, which were made last year and surfaced this week in a video on social media. In the video, Gruber suggests that the administration’s signature health-care legislation passed in part because of the “stupidity of the American voter” and a “lack of transparency” over its funding mechanisms.

“The strategy was to hide the truth from the American people,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who is slated to chair the Senate Budget Committee next year. “That is a threat to the American republic.”
In addition to us having discussed this long ago, the same topic came up with the FREE PILL issue, the premium tax charged for policies obtained from any exchange, the employer tax that factors in to restrict wage increases... it ALL comes back to the consumer.

Gruber has been a complicated figure in the history of the health-care law. He helped the Obama administration craft the measure and has been a leading advocate of it, but he has also made sporadic comments sparking political brush fires that have been problematic for the law’s supporters.

The White House sought Wednesday to distance itself from Gruber and his comments.

“The Affordable Care Act was publicly debated over the course of 14 months, with dozens of Congressional hearings, and countless town halls, speeches, and debates,” White House spokeswoman Jessica Santillo said in a statement. “The tax credits in the law that help millions of middle class Americans afford coverage were no secret, and in fact were central to the legislation. Not only do we disagree with [Gruber’s] comments, they’re simply not true.”

An administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity sought to play down Gruber’s role in developing the law, noting that he “did not work in the White House.” ...snipped

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gops-anti-obamacare-push-gains-new-momentum-in-wake-of-gruber-video/2014/11/12/e0d6b4d2-6aa7-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html

More Lies

Baldo

Nov 12 2014, 11:27 PM

The White House sought Wednesday to distance itself from Gruber and his comments.

“The Affordable Care Act was publicly debated over the course of 14 months, with dozens of Congressional hearings, and countless town halls, speeches, and debates,” White House spokeswoman Jessica Santillo said in a statement. “The tax credits in the law that help millions of middle class Americans afford coverage were no secret, and in fact were central to the legislation. Not only do we disagree with [Gruber’s] comments, they’re simply not true.”

Baldo

Nov 13 2014, 09:59 PM

USA Today - Obama-care killing small rural hospitals

Rural hospitals in critical condition
Rural hospitals serve many of society's most vulnerable.

RICHLAND, Ga. — Stewart-Webster Hospital had only 25 beds when it still treated patients. The rural hospital served this small town of 1,400 residents and those in the surrounding farms and crossroads for more than six decades.

But since the hospital closed in the spring of last year, many of those in need have to travel up to 40 miles to other hospitals. That's roughly the same distance it takes to get from Times Square to Greenwich, Conn., or from the White House to Baltimore, or from downtown San Francisco to San Jose.

Those trips would be unthinkable for city residents, but it's becoming a common way of life for many rural residents in this state, and across the nation.

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.

The Affordable Care Act was designed to improve access to health care for all Americans and will give them another chance at getting health insurance during open enrollment starting this Saturday. But critics say the ACA is also accelerating the demise of rural outposts that cater to many of society's most vulnerable. 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.

"The stand-alone, community hospital is going the way of the dinosaur," says Angela Mattie, chairwoman of the health care management and organizational leadership department at Connecticut's Quinnipiac University, known for its public opinion surveys on issues including public health.

The closings threaten to decimate a network of rural hospitals the federal government first established beginning in the late 1940s to ensure that no one would be without health care. It was a theme that resonated during the push for the new health law. But rural hospital officials and others say that federal regulators — along with state governments — are now starving the hospitals they created with policies and reimbursement rates that make it nearly impossible for them to stay afloat.

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."...snipped

http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2014/11/12/rural-hospital-closings-federal-reimbursement-medicaid-aca/18532471/

Those idiots Obama & Gruber has struck again... The Goober Brothers

Everything Obama touches turns to crap.