Monday, November 25, 2013

Can't spell conservative without the con

And by con I mean lying, dissembling, inhumane ideologues who put politics above the public health and safety. In particular, I'm talking about today's alleged scoop by Tucker Carlson's vanity project, The Daily Crapper which breathlessly announced  Cleveland Clinic is cutting staff because Obamacare:
The Cleveland Clinic, which is ranked among the top four U.S. hospitals, is making layoffs and cutting its budget more than $100 million as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act, the Daily Caller has learned.

“The cuts for 2014, about half of those are related to the Affordable Care Act…We anticipate a reduction in workforce,” Cleveland Clinic executive director of communications Eileen Sheil said in an interview with TheDC.
The funny thing about that "scoop" is this was already reported on Sept 18th by numerous news organizations. Furthermore, as analyzed on Oct 11th, the cuts aren't a direct result of Obamacare. It's not that Obamacare didn't alter the reimbursement schedule. It did, but the overall program was designed to lower federal reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid which would have been balanced by increased coverage under Medicaid and additional insurance subscribers who would sign up for affordable polices, thus cancelling out the unpaid debts that previously plagued hospital budgets.

All the parts were designed to work together and probably would have until the Republicans started screwing around with dismantling the balance points like actively discouraging younger, healthier people from signing up at all and GOP governors refusing to expand the Medicaid coverage after the cons on SCOTUS decided providing health care for poor people shouldn't be mandatory in a civil society.

The weird thing is, after the GOP majority in Ohio's state legislature refused to expand Medicaid coverage, Governor Kasich issued an executive order to do it anyway.

This should have solved the much of the lost revenue problem, except crackpot cons sued to keep the poor from getting Medicaid. They won an expedited hearing just recently.
The procedural ruling was a victory for the six Republican members of the Ohio House and two local Right to Life chapters who filed suit after a legislative-spending oversight panel approved the expenditure last week of $2.56 billion in federal aid provided under the Affordable Care Act. The Controlling Board acted at the request of Gov. John Kasich, who took administrative action to expand Medicaid after the Republican-controlled General Assembly refused to approve it.
Which would have been a big win for both Cleveland Clinic and the state coffers.
Expanding coverage to all Ohioans with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level — just under $16,000 a year for an individual — is expected to bring $13 billion in federal money to the state during the next seven years.
In other words, it's a great deal for the states. Of course common sense and humanity are not words in the crackpot Republican  lexicon. Nothing is more important than punishing the poor. They'll fight to the death of every last one of "those people" whom they judge to be undeserving in their relentless attempt to win policy concessions they didn't earn at the ballot box.

Cleveland Clinic should be fine in Ohio, if the governor prevails, but they have bigger problems. Thanks to hospital consolidation over the years, they own hospitals in other GOP controlled states where Republicans are determined to sabotage Obamacare. So in effect, they're not cutting staff because of Obamacare. Once again, the onus rests rather firmly on the crackpot cons of Republican party.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Gary said...

The Cleveland Clinic issued a statement that it was a LIE.

9:43:00 PM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Good to know. Not I've seen that mentioned anywhere in BigMedia.

12:08:00 PM  

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