It'll Be Hard To Get Care If The Hospitals Are Forced Out Of Business By Obamacare
One more way to force us into single payer, with healthcare through the government, it seems.

(If your "affordable" care is impossible to get, it really isn't care at all, is it?)

At The Daily Caller, Sarah Hurtubise writes that a fourth Georgia hospital has closed in two years due to Obamacare cuts:

The Lower Oconee Community Hospital is, for now, a critical access hospital in southeastern Georgia that holds 25 beds. The hospital is suffering from serious cash-flow problems, largely due to the area's 23 percent uninsured population, and hopes to reopen as "some kind of urgent care center," CEO Karen O'Neal said.

Many hospitals in the 25 states that rejected the Medicaid expansion are facing similar financial problems. Liberal administration ally Think Progress has already faulted Georgia for not expanding Medicaid as Obamacare envisioned.

But the reality is more complicated. The federal government has historically made payments to hospitals to cover the cost of uninsured patients seeking free medical care in emergency rooms, as federal law mandates that hospitals must care for all patients regardless of their ability to pay.

Because the Affordable Care Act's authors believed they'd forced all states to implement the Medicaid expansion, Obamacare vastly cut hospital payments, the Associated Press reports.

Republicans are now debating mini bailouts for hospitals (per the AP link just above). Ray Henry and Christina A. Cassidy write:

Republican leaders in Georgia and Mississippi may be bailing out hospitals that will lose funding they would have gotten from Obama's health care law. South Carolina's leaders increased payments to some hospitals in a push to improve rural health, though the extra money likely placated hospital officials who might otherwise have pressured Republicans to adopt the Democratic plan.

The basic problem is simple: Obama's overhaul is not being implemented as was planned. Its designers assumed that very few people would lack health insurance, meaning the U.S. government could reduce the payments it makes to hospitals for treating poor and uninsured patients. But after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, 25 states refused to expand their government-funded Medicaid programs or are still debating it, leaving large numbers of the poor without health insurance. Without health insurance, those low-income patients cannot fully pay for treatment.

Hospitals in the holdout states still have to treat the poor, but they will get less money for doing it.