http://www.beckershospitalreview.co...ion/9-hospitals-that-have-closed-in-2013.html it may not seem like muck but SERIOUSLY!?and not to mention the hospital thats aboout to close in Brooklyn. these hospital are the only saving grace of the locals who have no cars or have terrible conditions. even MY town just shut down our local hospital to build a COLLEGE! right next to another college!! NOW you need a car to even get there and the ambulance takes a long time! my brother almost died from an asthma attack because it almost took almost an hour for them to get to my house. what was a 10 minute drive turned into an 25-35 min max drive!! whats going on!?
They have been closing hospitals around the country for years. You have just noticed because they finally got one near you. This is nothing new. Google it.
Indeed. Does the poster have any idea how many hospitals in the USA? 5000 PLUS, not counting intermediate centers. Indeed, you only noticed because one was nearby.
Some hospitals have been cutting back for a decade. But the CURRENT issues are the 2% sequestration cuts for Medicare, and the actions of the Republican governors turning down Medicaid expansion are the drivers behind hospital issues this year. The states where the Republican governors have turned down $100s of billions of federal money have just crashed the hopes of numerous care facilities in those states to expand or maintain their facilities for the elderly and disabled. In effect, Republicans are deliberately creating the very situation they try to blame Obamacare would cause, and they do their craven politics at great cost in health and life of their own citizens!
Did Obamacare exist in the 1990's? http://americaswire.org/drupal7/?q=content/hospital-closings-jeopardize-care-poor-urban-communities
I would say that is part of the problem. The other problem are those who do have insurance are not paying those medical bills to hospitals. Some 79 million Americans have outstanding medical bills not paid are are in collection status. Think about that. the other issue is liability insurance, which has skyrocketed for trama centers. Major hospitals are designed around having a Trauma 1 center to handle almost all emergencies. As level one trama units are decreasing, so is the need for hospitals which have such centers. What you see are the growth of specific, intermediate care centers where day surgery or minor medical emergencies are the primary focus. these are cheaper to build and staff and why large hospitals, like the one in Brooklyn, are shutting down.
Think about this: someone who has a very good insurance policy may get his $10,000 bill reduced down to a couple of hundred dollars. Another guy who doesn't have any insurance gets stuck for the full $10,000 bill. That's why 79 million Americans don't pay their medical bills.
What differentiates health insurance companies is how they calculate that plan allowance. However, that does not excuse a person who has a good health insurance plan to not pay their bill or make arrangements to pay that bill whether it is for a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. But the other problem is that many hospitals do not want to make payment arrangements and will simply sell those unpaid balances to collection agencies so that they won't bother with the hassle.
Another of our local hospitals closed last month and the hospital in my home town no longer has a maternity ward. So now if you need to go to a hospital in my county to deliver a baby you have to drive at least 45 minutes to get to one! And the same goes if you are having a heart attack, stroke or other emergency. (I don't count the hospital in our town because it's nothing but a "band aid" station where the ER wait is hours. It's such a bad hospital that they had to put in a nursing home for the elderly in one of the wings.) Here in NY it seems libraries (which I love) can easily get funding but hospitals can't and are forced to close their doors.
I could be worse, he could have been waiting in the Ambulance in the Hospital Parking lot for 4 hours like in the UK with their Universal Un-Health Care after the 25 minute wait and ride.
yeah i see your point, and i could see a bit WHY our hospital was closed. one time my mom's back was in a lot of pain, like SERIOUSLY need morphine painful. she couldnt sit in a chair and passed out on the waiting room floor. and the nurses and doctors LITERALLY just walked over her, im not kidding i was RIGHT there! everyone in the waiting room was like somebody help this women, do something, and you know what they did? the desk lady walks up to her and say SHE NEEDS TO FILL OUT HER INFO FIRST! i was like WTF is the matter with you? do you NOT see her on the floor in pain!?.........WOW! looking back forget i complained that hospital was hell!
I believe Obama Care is just a step on the road to Nationalized Health Care like they have in the UK. Dementia victims 'have twice the risk of dying in hospital while a third are not properly diagnosed by staff' University professor, 37, dies from lung cancer after string of doctors dismissed symptoms as 'anxiety and depression' Premature twins died after being given 10 times too much morphine, nursing tribunal hears Failings in NHS cost 30,000 lives every year Inspections highlight 'barbaric' home care failings NHS watchdog to tackle malnutrition in hospitals Elderly warned of growing isolation as face-to-face care cut Family of RAF's finest who shot V1 rockets out the sky forced to sell medals to pay for care home Closing the Independent Living Fund shows how low the government will go Elderly patients diagnosed with 'acopia' - a disease that does not exist Mid-Staffs scandal: Sir David Nicholson could face corporate manslaughter and misconduct charges Growing fears of Bolton hospital death rate 'cover up' Patients 'are still in danger from nurses who can't speak English' say MPs, as they call for urgent action Older diabetics are suffering 'needless' amputations and blindness because they get the worst care Pensioner placed on Liverpool Care Pathway WITHOUT family's permission dies after spending eight days without food or water Basic errors in care cause kidney deaths Choosing a GP means gambling with your life this must stop Seventeen NHS hospitals have dangerously low numbers of nurses Hospital patients wont complain for fear of retribution New avoidable-deaths scandal to put more pressure on NHS chief Nurse linked to the death of premature twins killed by '10 times too much morphine' is allowed to keep working NHS neglect: elderly patients denied help with food Hip fracture patients suffering 'indefensible postcode lottery' Snap inspections expose scandal of 'institutionalised abuse' in care homes and hospitals Children's lives are being put at risk by a 'chronic shortage' of hospital doctors on weekends and evenings Hospital that left patients lying in soiled sheets and shivering with cold is given a stark warning to improve by health watchdog Mother-of-three dies of meningitis just five days after being admitted to hospital with EARACHE A&E patients being forced to wait in ambulances for up to eight hours because of lack of beds An unprecedented crisis is approaching, say the health services most senior figures These are just some example of what they must endure in the UK with their Universal Health Care. This isn't ten years worth, most of the articles are from Oct 2012 till now.
No, but the EMTALA did. That was the act that forces hospitals to treat ER patients, regardless of willingness or ability to pay, and even if the patient already has numerous unpaid hospital bills from previous visits.
Based on the evidence the last place to be when sick is in an English hospital. It's amazing anyone ever gets out of one of them alive.
You are right. It is impossible to blame an act that was just passed in 2010 and isn't even fully implemented for the hospitals that closed in the decades before, or even for the ones that closed after based on plans made before the act. Still, I find it likely that many of the closings are due to government interference. I just wanted to try to direct the focus to a more likely cause than the PPACA.
This is the high cost of government medicine. Lots of paper, lots of bureaucrats, plenty of work for lawyers - nothing to do with th provision of medical services.
Perhaps it would be good to look more closely at the article and the issue. "Government" is what has kept lots of hospitals operating in the past. Many of the facilities are closing because the local governments have CUT the hospital's funding, or decided there is no money to rebuild crumbling 50 or 60 year old facilities that our forefathers built for US to use! (Today's America: "Pay it forward what we received from the past??? NAaaah, too much trouble....") Now add sequester cuts, local cuts, all the umpteen millions who have lost their REAL health insurance and flip hamburgers if they work at all, and hospitals go away. PLUS the hospitals that are simply killing TOO MANY PATIENTS or paying huge fines for engaging in ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES!
Pensioner placed on Liverpool Care Pathway WITHOUT family's permission dies after spending eight days without food or water OR they could just 86 'em right in the care facility. Please read the story and see if that's what you want?
