With new health law, mergers a concern
Hospitals, clinics, and doctor groups have deployed a small army of lawyers and lobbyists to try to persuade the Obama administration to relax or waive older laws intended to thwart monopolies and to protect against shoddy care and fraudulent billing of patients or Medicare.
Just looking out for your health, dear Americans.
Consumer advocates fear that the health care law could worsen some of the problems it was meant to solve — by reducing competition, driving up costs, and creating incentives for doctors and hospitals to stint on care, in order to retain their cost-saving bonuses.
I kept typing it and typing it, but did they listen?
Also see: Obama's HMOs
At least there is Medicare:
Doctors shift away from elderly patients who use Medicare
Doctors across the country describe similar decisions, complaining that they’ve been forced to shift away from Medicare toward higher-paying patients, either privately insured or self-paying, in response to years of penny-pinching by Congress.
After all the money they have poured in all these years?
So who stole the loot?
Also see: Obama's Healthy Lies
At least the ill can get coverage, right?
Health plans for high-risk patients lag
The new program continues to attract only a fraction of the projected customers.
At the same time, since the high-risk insurance pools began in late summer and early fall, the medical bills have been much higher than anticipated in a few states, raising the question of whether the $5 billion that Congress has allocated for the program could run out even if relatively few people join.
I notice we NEVER RUN OUT of MONEY for WARS, WALL STREET, or ISRAEL!
The new health care law [is] experiencing growing pains.
All that time it took to write and pass the thing and it's a PoS on its arrival?
US mandates strict new cost management for health insurers
Industry watchers said the final regulations wound up being more manageable than investors initially feared.
Yeah, you SEE who is FIRST UP in the CHECK-UP LINE, 'eh?
Investors = Wall Street in newspaperese!
Health insurers face rate hike rule
Health insurers will have to justify some rate increases starting next year under a proposed federal rule. The federal government will not have the authority to reject rate increases, but....
Then "but" nuthin'!
Also see: Judge voids key part of Obama health care law
Doesn't matter.
They have that covered, can you believe it?
Fallback plan could save health care rule
Even if the Supreme Court ultimately agrees that government cannot require individuals to carry health coverage, the Obama administration could borrow a strategy that Medicare has used for decades to compel consumers to join new insurance groups.
Medicare’s coverage for doctor visits is voluntary and carries a separate premium, yet more than nine in 10 older people sign up. The reason is simple: Those who opt out when they first become eligible face a lifelong penalty that escalates the longer they wait.
This is the government that is supposed to be TAKING CARE OF YOU, huh?
The same kind of penalty could be incorporated into the health care overhaul to replace its current mandate that all those who can afford a policy must get one.
And remember when they said no death panels?
"When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,’’ Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.
Hey, what is one more lie from a government and mouthpiece media that is full of them day after day?
--more--"
Also see: Obamacare the End of Employer-Based Health Plans
That was supposed to be the foundati.... sigh.
I'm not feeling too good, readers. Happens every I ead a Boston Globe.
