Naturally, that is the whole reason for creating the case shortage in the first place.

And now they can pick and choose who gets benefits.

One little tip I found out by accident.

If it is something you can pay yourself, offer not to use insurance for it.

At the facility I use that is a flat 50% discount for cash.
Very handy to save cash when you haven't fulfilled your deductible yet. Downside is it takes longer to fulfill but whatever.

One of the casualties JB, but not the only one by any stretch.

The Government only does a few things well, and have now taken over health care:

Skill #1 Waste money - in full force, premiums have gone up every year by double digits.
Skill #2 Waste Time - coming along apace, it now is taking me more than twice as long to get an appointment
Skill #3 Waste Lives - Can you say VA? or how about #1 compounding with #2 to keep people from getting treatment

Oh yes, they are creating exactly the nightmare they want.

It's a market distortion, and that never works out as ostensibly intended.

Thanks to Obamacare, I now have to fill out two pages of multiple choice questions about my general health just to see my chiropractor.
You'd think the libtard tree-huggers would want to reduce timber cut to make paper.
But, oh, yeah, documentation, documentation. What is a democrat but a bureaucrat's socialist documentation paradise?
My medical doctor is really hoping that the next election will make all of Obamacare or what he calls "stupidity" go away.
I don't know about that if a RINO bottom-feeder like Jeb Bush rises to the top and wins.
That's provided that #III of the Royal House of Bush does not highly likely go the tepid way of McCain and Romney.
Hey, but Romney may be back for us, though.
Wheeee!

times are not tough for our hospitals they are IMPOSSIBLE.
We are just seeing the flow of closures accelerating .It will be like a torrent of water from a broken dam before he leaves office and then he will maintain his shit eating grin when he leaves office and say it is for the new president to correct. And during all of this time since it came to pass the opposition has chosen to let it go, having no regard for the now 320,000,000 citizens(?) of the usa. i expect the rate of assisted suicide will increase, not that those dying will know they were helped.

I have watched, over the past 10 years, before Obama, as large healthcare companies have eaten up all the hospitals, doctors, specialty services, labs, even pharmacies, to gain a 100% monopoly on healthcare in major cities. This is not due to Obama, this is due to greed. They fired many, many doctors and staff, and the nurse to patient ratio is 20 to 1 or worse. Most people working in hospitals are not nurses, they are techs, and they went through a 6 week course and are paid 10 dollars an hour. I was in the hospital and on my floor, there were 30 patients, and most nights not one staff member. I spent many nights sitting at the nurses station as patients pressed the call buttons and got no response. People died almost every night and hours went by with the Code Blue message going off for multiple floors and there were only 4 nurses in the entire hospital after midnight. Then I saw the benifactors, and how well they were treated at their party in the hospital, including private armed security to keep the little people away. Very ugly. We are all screwed, and it is because of greed. Same thing is happening in pharmacies. My RS out of pocket is 100 dollars, but when the insurance pays, it is only 30. Which means it really costs about 10. They pad the cost to get what they want and if you pay cash, they make a boat load. Sickens me. Healthcare is one place where it needs to be not for profit and the patients need to rate the service and people should be paid by those evals and fired by them as well. Same for teachers. Here in NY, 50% of kids no longer graduate H.S. and that is just fine. Everyone accpts it. People need to be fired, and schools need to be shut down and people need to be accountable.

Our rural hospital is actually in the black because of Ocare....That's what they claim or is it the fact that the are 250% more expensive than hospitals 3 hours away. Wait they don't have any competition here locally..what was I thinking...

Yep, and my employer just dropped Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield after the premiums were going to go up another 35% after having gone up 25% the year before. That's change I'm believing in. Remember, in order for communism to thrive, there has to shortages of something; whether those shortages occur naturally (rarely) or are made intentional (uh, centrally planned that way), just so long as political objectives are met, doesn't matter to them.

We're moving towards third world care. Our premium is going up 50 bucks a month (on top of the 200 it increased last year.) Thanks Obama voters!!! Ahem, circuitguy!!

Not surprising at all. Something had to give.

Although the health industry already had its issues before ObamaCare, as demonstrated by AJAshinoff's wife and documentation. Does any hospital ever actually break even? They are all considered non-profit as far as I know in order to raise money for capital projects. Many if not all of the smaller hospitals are subsidized by the local government.

I have said for a long time that OCare was never about better healthcare. It has always been about creating more revenue streams for the government. And now the incentive to enter the industry as a career is quickly being eliminated.

OCare has irreversibly changed the healthcare industry. Whether even some of the changes are for the best is yet to be seen.

Documentation, documentation, documentation followed by procedure, procedure, procedure - let snot forget demerits for not stopping in the middle of a procedure to document what was done (or used) or failing to strictly follow procedure (no matter how mundane or unnecessary or how much it takes the nurses eyes off the patient)....this is driving my wife nuts (20 year OR nurse). Her private outpatient OR has been gobbled up by a hospital and they are now stressing conformity to comply with Ocare regulation.

This is quite an accurate assessment of the hospital business. The casualty of such consolidation is patient-to-nurse ratio.

Speaking from what I know of the industry, there is a wave of consolidation hitting hospitals. Firms are buying them up and out very cheaply. As the article confirms, the firms focus on getting more patients from private insurers and liability insurers that pay the higher fees per service, many are deciding to not even accept Medicare/Medicaid because it is not even worth the hassle. The result is a supply squeeze during a period of demand increase (medicaid enrolls have increased thanks to the Obamacare expansions). The outcome of all of this is very predictable if you have studied basic economics.