10 thoughts on “And The Other Half Are Fools”

  1. I guess if you don’t build 45 hospitals, then you saved the money that would otherwise be spent on building them. Ergo, you lowered the cost of healthcare, so Obama win!

    Well… except the concept of not spending on infrastructure goes against Keynesian economics. On the other hand, if demand in a free market called for new hospitals, then the now limited supply will increase individual prices as well. I guess we are all losers with Obamacare.

  2. Construction on the 45 doctor owned hospitals stopped due to a provision in the health care act put in to benefit other hospitals who hated the competition. So, while stopping the new hospitals “lowers” health care costs, eliminating competition leads to higher prices as does reducing supply.

    I guess we really did have to pass the bill to see what was in it. One can only wonder how many other nuggets are buried in the 2000+ page monstrocity. It’d be an interesting exercise to follow the money and see who benefited from this provision and who put it into the legislation.

  3. Larry J –

    It says right in the article that the provision was sponsored by the AHA:

    Artz writes, “According to Russell, the AHA, along with Sen. [Max] Baucus (D-MT) and Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA), are responsible for the language in Section 6001.”

    To be fair, that part of the article was after an ad break that was as almost long as the article itself.

  4. As I posted over at VodkaPundit:

    So, to benefit a power political special interest that hates competition, construction on 45 new hospitals is stopped. This has several impacts:

    1. Reducing competition makes it easier to raise prices.
    2. Reducing supply tends to increase prices.
    3. How many construction jobs are lost as a result of stopping these new hospitals?
    4. How many jobs would those 45 new hospitals have created but now can’t?
    5. How many millions of dollars of investor money is now lost? These losses can usually be written off of taxes so what will be the impact on revenue?

    Finally, how many other “nuggets” like this one are buried in the legislation?

  5. Want to bet that somewhere in there are also buried stricter licensing, reporting, and regulatory requirements that burden small clinics right out of the market, to the benefit of the big health-care operators? All in the name of safety, of course. Got to keep the rubes safe from their own dumbass decisions!

    As an illustration of what I mean, a tiny clinic just opened recently in my neighborhood grocery store. It’s staffed by a nurse practioner and a secretary. There’s no appointment process — you just walk in — and they take no insurance and file no forms, it’s just cash or credit card at the cash register. They’ll do a mini-checkup for $50, send your blood out for a lipid panel (cholesterol check) for $100, give you a flu shot for $25, clean and bandage or even suture a minor wound for $75, and so on.

    In this particular case, it was opened by a local healthcare giant, with platoons of lawyers and accountants on the payroll at HQ to file forms with the government, so it’s in no danger from Obamacare’s strangling of entrepreneurship. But if any small operator was thinking of imitating this idea, they’re thinking twice now I’m sure.

    And then we wonder why we have to wait 5 hours in the Big Hospital ER to get a throat culture and a script for penicillin!

  6. But if any small operator was thinking of imitating this idea, they’re thinking twice now I’m sure.

    We had two or three small ones open up in the last 5 years. Of course none since Obamacare was signed, but to be fair, planning does take time. At least one is likely to run amiss of the new regulations based on stories I’ve heard.

    I’m not counting the small clinics that opened up in CVS, Walgreens, etc. within the area. All this growth while “progressive” drones complained about limited access to healthcare. “Rubes” is becoming too nice a word to use for these drones.

  7. “it’s always hard to tell if these kinds of consequences are intended, or not”

    Nope – with these clowns, it’s definitely intended. 🙁

  8. Well, yeah, Barbara — torpedo anything that resembles a market and then claim that “only socialism can save us.”

  9. No no, TQ, the refrain is “only socialists can save us.” And we need to give them lots of power to do that difficult job. And money. Chauffeured limousines, too, come to think of it, so they don’t have to waste any of their precious saving brainpower navigating the car through the clusters of unemployed flower sellers and window washers at red lights.

  10. What’s wrong with the rest of them?

    That really is the question. The fact that Obama’s favorables are still double digits causes me great concern for this country.

    Carl, I hear the rain in Spain doesn’t fall mainly on the plain?

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