Rural Health Care Will Suffer
Rural health care has relied upon the small force of doctors that practice in such areas and on the hospitals that provide the necessary services in those areas. Rural health care has been in a precarious position for years; it is under-compensated by Medicare and suffers from an increasing number of low income people needing health care.
Depending upon what is and isn't included in whatever results from the current process of health care reform, we could literally see rural health care go away, at least as it exists today. The "bigs" are the systems that get the grease to quiet their "squeaky wheel" approach to Congress. The "littles" get the scraps that fall from the table. So it has been for a long time now, and, likely, so it will remain.
The small rural hospitals have little ability to recover the underpayments from Medicare patients and from the 'free' care they deliver under federal law. They have a very limited ability to "cost shift" since they also have a small population of covered people onto whom they can shift these unreimbursed costs. There are some 5,000 such hospitals across the country.
It will be most interesting to see what Washington has decided to do with rural health care once we are permitted to "look behind the curtain". If I still lived in a town with an independent small hospital, I'd really be concerned...even more concerned than I am already...and I'm plenty concerned over this 'reform' that is being crafted behind the closed doors of the White House and the Congress.
I sure hope they get it right!
Depending upon what is and isn't included in whatever results from the current process of health care reform, we could literally see rural health care go away, at least as it exists today. The "bigs" are the systems that get the grease to quiet their "squeaky wheel" approach to Congress. The "littles" get the scraps that fall from the table. So it has been for a long time now, and, likely, so it will remain.
The small rural hospitals have little ability to recover the underpayments from Medicare patients and from the 'free' care they deliver under federal law. They have a very limited ability to "cost shift" since they also have a small population of covered people onto whom they can shift these unreimbursed costs. There are some 5,000 such hospitals across the country.
It will be most interesting to see what Washington has decided to do with rural health care once we are permitted to "look behind the curtain". If I still lived in a town with an independent small hospital, I'd really be concerned...even more concerned than I am already...and I'm plenty concerned over this 'reform' that is being crafted behind the closed doors of the White House and the Congress.
I sure hope they get it right!
Posted by The Curmudgeon at 1/12/2010 9:19 AM 
Categories: Health Care,Quality of Life,State Issues,People,National Issues
Categories: Health Care,Quality of Life,State Issues,People,National Issues
Comments