Cuts in Hospital Subsidies Threaten Safety-Net Care
Source: New York Times
SAVANNAH, Ga. — The uninsured pour into Memorial Health hospital here: the waitress with cancer in her voice box who for two years assumed she just had a sore throat. The unemployed diabetic with a wound stretching the length of her shin. The construction worker who could no longer breathe on his own after weeks of untreated asthma attacks and had to be put on a respirator.
Many of these patients were expected to gain health coverage under the Affordable Care Act through a major expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor. But after the Supreme Court in 2012 gave states the right to opt out, Georgia, like about half the states, almost all of them Republican-led, refused to broaden the program.
Now, in a perverse twist, many of the poor people who rely on safety-net hospitals like Memorial will be doubly unlucky. A government subsidy, little known outside health policy circles but critical to the hospitals’ survival, is being sharply reduced under the new health law.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/health/cuts-in-hospital-subsidies-threaten-safety-net-care.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131109&_r=0
Here's hoping the hospitals administrators get on all the republican governors, who opted out of the major expansion of Medicaid, under the Affordable Care Act. If there is enough pressure, maybe they will 'opt back in' so the program can help all the people who need it.
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