Monday, October 16, 2017 4:10:34 AM
Top Hospitals Opt Out of Obamacare
https://health.usnews.com/health-news/hospital-of-tomorrow/articles/2013/10/30/top-hospitals-opt-out-of-obamacare
SORRY, WE DON'T TAKE OBAMACARE
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/sunday-review/sorry-we-dont-take-obamacare.html?mtrref=duckduckgo.com&gwh=1F9858CFD606A8E0FE8D5A5241D5E2A9&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion
Top Hospitals Won’t Treat Obamacare Patients
Thank you, Mr. Obama, for a Marxist plan guaranteed to force doctors into retirement (if it is permitted) as the demands of an ever-increasing number of patients are ignored.
https://www.westernjournalism.com/top-hospitals-wont-treat-obamacare-patients/
Got Obamacare, can't find doctors
Terri Durheim and her family now have health insurance, thanks to Obamacare. What they don't have are local doctors and hospitals who will take it.
This worries the Enid, Okla., resident since she has a teenage son with a serious heart condition. They now have to find a pediatric cardiologist in Oklahoma City, more than an hour away.
And if there's an emergency ... "obviously we'd have to pay out of pocket and go here in town, but that defeats the purpose of insurance. I'm truly grateful we have insurance. It's reasonable and affordable, but it's not doing me a lot of good," said Durheim, who just had to drive 90 minutes to Stillwater, Okla., for a CAT scan for herself. "It's so frustrating."
Like Durheim, many Americans who've enrolled on the Obamacare exchanges are realizing they have access to a relatively limited set of doctors and hospitals. In many areas, the largest hospitals are not participating and many doctors are not accepting the coverage.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/19/news/economy/obamacare-doctors/index.html
Nation’s elite cancer hospitals off-limits under Obamacare
WASHINGTON — Cancer patients relieved that they can get insurance coverage because of the new health care law may be disappointed to learn that some of the nation’s best cancer hospitals are off-limits.
An Associated Press survey found examples coast to coast. Seattle Cancer Care Alliance is excluded by five out of eight insurers in Washington state’s insurance exchange. MD Anderson Cancer Center says it’s in less than half of the plans in the Houston area. Memorial Sloan-Kettering is included by two of nine insurers in New York City and has out-of-network agreements with two more.
http://nypost.com/2014/03/19/nations-elite-cancer-hospitals-off-limits-under-obamacare/
ObamaCare Cancer Patients Losing Hospital Coverage
Hundreds of cancer patients who belong to a failed ObamaCare health insurance co-op could soon have no coverage for their continued hospital treatment, the New York Post reports.
Health Republic Insurance of New York, which has lost $130 million dollars in 18 months, was the only ObamaCare exchange insurer contracted with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.
250 Health Republic members receiving care at Sloan Kettering need to find a new insurer by November 15 that the hospital takes or prepare to shoulder the cost themselves. New York is forcing their carrier to close shop at the end of this month for losing so much money.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/08/obamacare-cancer-patients-losing-hospital-coverage/
Second class patients... sorry we don't take Obamacare!
A McKinsey study shows Obamacare insurers lost money in 2014 and the losses doubled in 2015.
Amazingly, the study concludes there’s nothing to worry about because “30 percent of insurers nationwide were profitable.”
Meanwhile, outright refusals to accept Obamacare mount. “Sorry, We Don’t Take Obamacare” is now a frequent response.
The New York Times tells the sad tale of an increasing number of “Sorry, We Don’t Take Obamacare” responses to those seeking medical assistance.
http://talk.baltimoresun.com/topic/271352-second-class-patients-sorry-we-dont-take-obamacare/
Top Hospital Kicks Obamacare Patients Out on Their Butt
A Watchdog.org study of the top-tiered hospitals found they’re not easily accessible to the Obamacare insurance exchange participants. For example, in Ohio, the Obamacare exchange includes a dozen insurance companies – yet the state’s premier hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, accepts only one of those dozen firms.
https://www.westernjournalism.com/top-hospital-kicks-obamacare-patients-butt/
A Dozen Hospitals Are Laying Off Staff and Blaming Obamacare. Don’t Believe Them.
Hospitals tend to be among the largest employers in their communities — which means that any individual decision to lay off staff can have an outsized local impact. And taken together, a dozen recent announcements seem to paint an especially dire picture for hospitals (and their communities) around the nation.
For example, NorthShore in Illinois says it will lay off 1% of its workforce. The staffing cuts “ensure NorthShore remains well positioned to deal with the unprecedented changes brought on by the Affordable Care Act,” according to a memo from the health system’s chief human resources executive.
And California’s John Muir Health is offering staff voluntary buyouts ahead of ACA implementation. “We’re being paid less, and we either stick our head in the sand or make changes for the future so patients can continue to access us for their care,” according to John Muir spokesperson Ben Drew.
When Obamacare was being debated in Congress, its opponents tried to tar it with a deadly label: “the job-killing health law.” So is the ACA finally living down to its sobriquet?
Not exactly. While the recent news makes for provocative headlines, the devil’s in the details — and the financial reports.
A Closer Look at Industry Pressures
It’s clear that something is shifting in the hospital market. After years of employment growth, hospitals’ hiring patterns have largely leveled off. Collectively, organizations shed 9,000 jobs in May — the worst single month for the hospital sector in a decade.
https://californiahealthline.org/news/a-dozen-hospitals-are-laying-off-staff-and-blaming-obamacare-dont-believe-them/
Obamacare: Fewer options for many
Nationally the marketplaces offer tens of thousands of different policies with a wide variety of coverage, but Harte has noticed many have one thing in common: They cover a narrow network of doctors and hospitals.
That narrower network comes as particularly bad news for the residents of Concord, New Hampshire.
Concord's one hospital won't accept any policies offered by the marketplaces. To see a doctor, specialist or primary care provider affiliated with the hospital, patients on these Obamacare plans will have to pay out of their own pocket. The closest in-network hospital is in Manchester.
"Can you imagine having to go 25 miles away to Manchester to get access to a health care provider that is covered by your insurance?" Harte asked. "Right now, Concord is one big black hole of health care for people buying these plans."
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/29/health/obamacare-doctors-limited/index.html
If You Can't Go to Cedars-Sinai Anymore, Is It Obamacare's Fault?
At Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, originals by Picasso and Warhol hang in the hallways. The deluxe maternity rooms—three-bedroom, two-bath suites with views of the city—rent out at nearly $4,000 a day. It’s the place where Madonna got hernia surgery and Jodie Foster had her baby. The Hollywood Reporter once called it “the medical world’s most glam facility.”
But a group of Angelenos is about to lose access to Cedars, because, starting January 1, their insurance companies will no longer cover treatment at the hospital. Infuriated, some of these people insist that Obamacare is to blame. And the truth is: They’re not exactly wrong.
To keep prices down, insurers are sending patients only to the doctors, clinics, and hospitals that have agreed to accept lower reimbursements.
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of California, two of the state’s largest insurers, wanted bigger discounts than Cedars was willing to give, however. As a result, patients who want fully covered access to Cedars have only one option left: a health maintenance organization, called Health Net, with a relatively small network of doctors.
https://newrepublic.com/article/115991/obamacare-insurance-plans-cedars-sinai-hospital-limits-many
How Forest Park Medical Center buckled under Obamacare
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/05/11/forest-park-medical-center-buckled-obamacare
Forest Park Medical Center Fort Worth shuts down MAY 25, 2016
Forest Park Medical Center Fort Worth was shut down late Tuesday and most of its employees laid off as Texas Health Resources wraps up its purchase of the bankrupt doctor-owned, luxury hospital on the city’s west side.
Forest Park hospital’s outgoing managers shut down operations on Tuesday because they expected the sale to close, said Jeff Prostok, one of their bankruptcy attorneys. He said he now expects the deal to be completed Wednesday, opening up a new chapter for the facility.
“We are ceasing operations. We are in a layoff situation,” Prostok said. “We thought it (the sale) would happen yesterday and it will happen today. We let the folks go because there really wasn’t anything for them to do. We didn’t want them around doing nothing.”
Court records show that the Forest Park facility employed 175 people, including 115 full-time employees and 60 part-time employees.
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/business/article79793337.html
San Antonio's Forest Park Medical Center building sells at foreclosure
No other parties bid at the auction, which was held on the grounds of the Bexar County Courthouse.
The property has essentially been mothballed since the hospital’s operator, Forest Park Medical Center San Antonio, closed on Oct. 15 because of financial troubles. It attributed its closing partly on insurance companies that would not enter into contracts with it.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/local/article/San-Antonio-hospital-sells-at-foreclosure-6863287.php#photo-9218937
Mayo says the U.S. government does not pay enough to cover the cost of care.
More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman.
The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.
Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.
“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”
https://ayfs.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/mayo-clinic-refuses-to-accept-medicare-what-happens-to-obamacare-when-the-doctors-refuse-to-accept-the-low-government-pay/
Covered California unplugs most top hospitals from patients
President Obama has been claiming that people can keep their favorite doctors under the Affordable Care Act. But anyone who wants a premier hospital in California better do some homework before signing up.
A survey of the state’s top hospitals has revealed that most contract with only one or two insurance companies under Obamacare, even though the Covered California exchange has 11 companies to choose from. And one hospital, Loma Linda University Medical Center, has refused to participate altogether and has no contracts.
Obamacare is driven by low-cost policies. So the reimbursement rate that hospitals will receive from insurance companies just isn’t worth it to them. The end result is that the blue ribbon hospitals won’t have a large presence on the exchange, CalWatchdog.com has learned.
“The more we are learn about the insurance plans on Covered California, the more it becomes clear that the big name hospitals are sitting on the sidelines — some by choice, other by design of the insurers,” said Josh Archambault, senior fellow for the Foundation for Government Accountability and a frequent Obamacare critic. “Consumers get the short end of the stick.”
CalWatchdog.com looked at the top 15 California hospitals listed in U.S. News & World Report’s 2013-2014 annual report and contacted each one to determine their Obamacare insurance contracts. The full list is at the bottom of this article. We found that six hospitals only contracted with one company, another six had two companies, one hospital had none, and one hospital accepted all 12 companies at various levels. Stanford Hospital, listed as No. 2 by U.S. News, refused to respond to numerous requests for information.
https://calwatchdog.com/2013/11/27/covered-california-unplugs-most-top-hospitals-from-patients/
https://health.usnews.com/health-news/hospital-of-tomorrow/articles/2013/10/30/top-hospitals-opt-out-of-obamacare
SORRY, WE DON'T TAKE OBAMACARE
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/sunday-review/sorry-we-dont-take-obamacare.html?mtrref=duckduckgo.com&gwh=1F9858CFD606A8E0FE8D5A5241D5E2A9&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion
Top Hospitals Won’t Treat Obamacare Patients
Thank you, Mr. Obama, for a Marxist plan guaranteed to force doctors into retirement (if it is permitted) as the demands of an ever-increasing number of patients are ignored.
https://www.westernjournalism.com/top-hospitals-wont-treat-obamacare-patients/
Got Obamacare, can't find doctors
Terri Durheim and her family now have health insurance, thanks to Obamacare. What they don't have are local doctors and hospitals who will take it.
This worries the Enid, Okla., resident since she has a teenage son with a serious heart condition. They now have to find a pediatric cardiologist in Oklahoma City, more than an hour away.
And if there's an emergency ... "obviously we'd have to pay out of pocket and go here in town, but that defeats the purpose of insurance. I'm truly grateful we have insurance. It's reasonable and affordable, but it's not doing me a lot of good," said Durheim, who just had to drive 90 minutes to Stillwater, Okla., for a CAT scan for herself. "It's so frustrating."
Like Durheim, many Americans who've enrolled on the Obamacare exchanges are realizing they have access to a relatively limited set of doctors and hospitals. In many areas, the largest hospitals are not participating and many doctors are not accepting the coverage.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/19/news/economy/obamacare-doctors/index.html
Nation’s elite cancer hospitals off-limits under Obamacare
WASHINGTON — Cancer patients relieved that they can get insurance coverage because of the new health care law may be disappointed to learn that some of the nation’s best cancer hospitals are off-limits.
An Associated Press survey found examples coast to coast. Seattle Cancer Care Alliance is excluded by five out of eight insurers in Washington state’s insurance exchange. MD Anderson Cancer Center says it’s in less than half of the plans in the Houston area. Memorial Sloan-Kettering is included by two of nine insurers in New York City and has out-of-network agreements with two more.
http://nypost.com/2014/03/19/nations-elite-cancer-hospitals-off-limits-under-obamacare/
ObamaCare Cancer Patients Losing Hospital Coverage
Hundreds of cancer patients who belong to a failed ObamaCare health insurance co-op could soon have no coverage for their continued hospital treatment, the New York Post reports.
Health Republic Insurance of New York, which has lost $130 million dollars in 18 months, was the only ObamaCare exchange insurer contracted with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.
250 Health Republic members receiving care at Sloan Kettering need to find a new insurer by November 15 that the hospital takes or prepare to shoulder the cost themselves. New York is forcing their carrier to close shop at the end of this month for losing so much money.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/08/obamacare-cancer-patients-losing-hospital-coverage/
Second class patients... sorry we don't take Obamacare!
A McKinsey study shows Obamacare insurers lost money in 2014 and the losses doubled in 2015.
Amazingly, the study concludes there’s nothing to worry about because “30 percent of insurers nationwide were profitable.”
Meanwhile, outright refusals to accept Obamacare mount. “Sorry, We Don’t Take Obamacare” is now a frequent response.
The New York Times tells the sad tale of an increasing number of “Sorry, We Don’t Take Obamacare” responses to those seeking medical assistance.
http://talk.baltimoresun.com/topic/271352-second-class-patients-sorry-we-dont-take-obamacare/
Top Hospital Kicks Obamacare Patients Out on Their Butt
A Watchdog.org study of the top-tiered hospitals found they’re not easily accessible to the Obamacare insurance exchange participants. For example, in Ohio, the Obamacare exchange includes a dozen insurance companies – yet the state’s premier hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, accepts only one of those dozen firms.
https://www.westernjournalism.com/top-hospital-kicks-obamacare-patients-butt/
A Dozen Hospitals Are Laying Off Staff and Blaming Obamacare. Don’t Believe Them.
Hospitals tend to be among the largest employers in their communities — which means that any individual decision to lay off staff can have an outsized local impact. And taken together, a dozen recent announcements seem to paint an especially dire picture for hospitals (and their communities) around the nation.
For example, NorthShore in Illinois says it will lay off 1% of its workforce. The staffing cuts “ensure NorthShore remains well positioned to deal with the unprecedented changes brought on by the Affordable Care Act,” according to a memo from the health system’s chief human resources executive.
And California’s John Muir Health is offering staff voluntary buyouts ahead of ACA implementation. “We’re being paid less, and we either stick our head in the sand or make changes for the future so patients can continue to access us for their care,” according to John Muir spokesperson Ben Drew.
When Obamacare was being debated in Congress, its opponents tried to tar it with a deadly label: “the job-killing health law.” So is the ACA finally living down to its sobriquet?
Not exactly. While the recent news makes for provocative headlines, the devil’s in the details — and the financial reports.
A Closer Look at Industry Pressures
It’s clear that something is shifting in the hospital market. After years of employment growth, hospitals’ hiring patterns have largely leveled off. Collectively, organizations shed 9,000 jobs in May — the worst single month for the hospital sector in a decade.
https://californiahealthline.org/news/a-dozen-hospitals-are-laying-off-staff-and-blaming-obamacare-dont-believe-them/
Obamacare: Fewer options for many
Nationally the marketplaces offer tens of thousands of different policies with a wide variety of coverage, but Harte has noticed many have one thing in common: They cover a narrow network of doctors and hospitals.
That narrower network comes as particularly bad news for the residents of Concord, New Hampshire.
Concord's one hospital won't accept any policies offered by the marketplaces. To see a doctor, specialist or primary care provider affiliated with the hospital, patients on these Obamacare plans will have to pay out of their own pocket. The closest in-network hospital is in Manchester.
"Can you imagine having to go 25 miles away to Manchester to get access to a health care provider that is covered by your insurance?" Harte asked. "Right now, Concord is one big black hole of health care for people buying these plans."
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/29/health/obamacare-doctors-limited/index.html
If You Can't Go to Cedars-Sinai Anymore, Is It Obamacare's Fault?
At Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, originals by Picasso and Warhol hang in the hallways. The deluxe maternity rooms—three-bedroom, two-bath suites with views of the city—rent out at nearly $4,000 a day. It’s the place where Madonna got hernia surgery and Jodie Foster had her baby. The Hollywood Reporter once called it “the medical world’s most glam facility.”
But a group of Angelenos is about to lose access to Cedars, because, starting January 1, their insurance companies will no longer cover treatment at the hospital. Infuriated, some of these people insist that Obamacare is to blame. And the truth is: They’re not exactly wrong.
To keep prices down, insurers are sending patients only to the doctors, clinics, and hospitals that have agreed to accept lower reimbursements.
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of California, two of the state’s largest insurers, wanted bigger discounts than Cedars was willing to give, however. As a result, patients who want fully covered access to Cedars have only one option left: a health maintenance organization, called Health Net, with a relatively small network of doctors.
https://newrepublic.com/article/115991/obamacare-insurance-plans-cedars-sinai-hospital-limits-many
How Forest Park Medical Center buckled under Obamacare
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/05/11/forest-park-medical-center-buckled-obamacare
Forest Park Medical Center Fort Worth shuts down MAY 25, 2016
Forest Park Medical Center Fort Worth was shut down late Tuesday and most of its employees laid off as Texas Health Resources wraps up its purchase of the bankrupt doctor-owned, luxury hospital on the city’s west side.
Forest Park hospital’s outgoing managers shut down operations on Tuesday because they expected the sale to close, said Jeff Prostok, one of their bankruptcy attorneys. He said he now expects the deal to be completed Wednesday, opening up a new chapter for the facility.
“We are ceasing operations. We are in a layoff situation,” Prostok said. “We thought it (the sale) would happen yesterday and it will happen today. We let the folks go because there really wasn’t anything for them to do. We didn’t want them around doing nothing.”
Court records show that the Forest Park facility employed 175 people, including 115 full-time employees and 60 part-time employees.
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/business/article79793337.html
San Antonio's Forest Park Medical Center building sells at foreclosure
No other parties bid at the auction, which was held on the grounds of the Bexar County Courthouse.
The property has essentially been mothballed since the hospital’s operator, Forest Park Medical Center San Antonio, closed on Oct. 15 because of financial troubles. It attributed its closing partly on insurance companies that would not enter into contracts with it.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/local/article/San-Antonio-hospital-sells-at-foreclosure-6863287.php#photo-9218937
Mayo says the U.S. government does not pay enough to cover the cost of care.
More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman.
The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.
Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.
“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”
https://ayfs.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/mayo-clinic-refuses-to-accept-medicare-what-happens-to-obamacare-when-the-doctors-refuse-to-accept-the-low-government-pay/
Covered California unplugs most top hospitals from patients
President Obama has been claiming that people can keep their favorite doctors under the Affordable Care Act. But anyone who wants a premier hospital in California better do some homework before signing up.
A survey of the state’s top hospitals has revealed that most contract with only one or two insurance companies under Obamacare, even though the Covered California exchange has 11 companies to choose from. And one hospital, Loma Linda University Medical Center, has refused to participate altogether and has no contracts.
Obamacare is driven by low-cost policies. So the reimbursement rate that hospitals will receive from insurance companies just isn’t worth it to them. The end result is that the blue ribbon hospitals won’t have a large presence on the exchange, CalWatchdog.com has learned.
“The more we are learn about the insurance plans on Covered California, the more it becomes clear that the big name hospitals are sitting on the sidelines — some by choice, other by design of the insurers,” said Josh Archambault, senior fellow for the Foundation for Government Accountability and a frequent Obamacare critic. “Consumers get the short end of the stick.”
CalWatchdog.com looked at the top 15 California hospitals listed in U.S. News & World Report’s 2013-2014 annual report and contacted each one to determine their Obamacare insurance contracts. The full list is at the bottom of this article. We found that six hospitals only contracted with one company, another six had two companies, one hospital had none, and one hospital accepted all 12 companies at various levels. Stanford Hospital, listed as No. 2 by U.S. News, refused to respond to numerous requests for information.
https://calwatchdog.com/2013/11/27/covered-california-unplugs-most-top-hospitals-from-patients/
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