Posted on 04/06/2010 1:00:05 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
A group of lawyers can own a hospital. A group of hedge fund managers can own one. But doctors? Not after this year.
Big community hospitals supported the president's health overhaul. In exchange they are getting something they have desperately wanted for years: a ban on new competition.
The health overhaul was of course supposed to be about expanding coverage to the uninsured and slowing down the inexorable rise in health care costs, though the second goal was more talk than reality.
Buried in the hundreds of pages of legalese and footnotes are handouts unrelated to these two goals. The recipients are favored groups that went along with ObamaCare from the get go. Some of these groups got surprisingly little--doctors got neither tort reform nor a Medicare pay increase--but others got huge handouts. The AARP got the donut hole of Medicare drug plans filled.
Some of these handouts are harder to see and haven't gotten much attention but are extremely generous. One is to the hospital industry, for which the bill actually bans a potent form of competition. Section 6001 of the bill contains a measure that prevents groups of doctors from investing in new hospitals. A group of lawyers can own a hospital. A group of hedge fund managers can own one. But doctors, who would presumably know the most about starting a hospital, won't be able to after this year when the bill kicks in.
The back story here is long and interesting. (Check out Forbes' cover story on physician-owned hospitals from 2008: "Stop That Patient.") Big hospitals, represented by the nonprofit American Hospital Association and the for-profit Federation of American Hospitals, have long sought to limit competition from the doctors they employ. When a doctor sees a patient he generates two streams of revenue, a professional fee
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.forbes.com ...
Bump...
Sigh...
Stupid is as stupid does.
They’ll still build the hospitals. They’ll just build them in places like Costa Rica, Jamaica, the Turk and Curacao islands, etc.
Those countries will be delighted to make sure they have safe locations, tax breaks, etc., because of all the medical tourists they will bring with them.
And, medical tourism will stop being something for the very rich. Plane flights to the Islands and Latin America are cheap enough. A middle class worker in his forties will certainly be better off getting his procedures done in these new hospitals for cold cash (even if he has to sell his boat), than waiting in line for three months for a Obama approved clinic.
This “law” is not going to do anything it is designed to do. It is, however, going to make things worse at every level.
bump for reference
Given that Geisinger in Pennsylvania was the recipient of ‘special’ funds to obtain a congressman’s vote, I just don’t get it.
Geisinger is physician owned.
Looks un-Constitutional to me. 14th Amendment. Equal treatment under the law. Some physicians need to sue to kill this law
Article yesterday in an English Costa Rica news site:
http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/april/05/costarica10040502.htm
Good find. Thanks. I’ve bookmarked it.
bump
This sucks. I’ve had 3 surgeries over the last 6 years, all at a doctor-founded outpatient surgery center, right next door to the main hospital. I received excellent care. This is just plain nuts and makes no sense whatsoever.
Repeal and replace!!!
ping
That will happen.
Also, a simple “consulting” fee would dodge the problem nicely.
is an outpatient surgi-center considered a hospital?
Well, doctors, —you better lawyer up!!
later
What’s the argument for prohibiting doctor-owned hospitals? Aren’t doctors also prohibited from owning pharmacies?
Why we think politicians can solve problems is beyond me. They never do and always make things worse.
There will be consequences. Somehow Liberals believe that there are no economic laws. They disregard Natural Law to the harm of all those around them.
If only the people would see that Liberalism is the economic equivalent of jumping off the roof.
AIT thinks it will get to passport control. American doctors in critical fields will find their passports revoked and be prevented from leaving the country.
Yep, just like the good old Soviet Union. Nobody in any crucial industry — most especially doctors, is going to be allowed out of the country. At least, not with their family, and not with their money.
We might get that southern border fence after all. But the border guards will be facing north.
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