Tuesday, January 04, 2011

The latest skeleton to fall out of Obamacare - Ban on physician owned hospitals

Physicians have been building specialty hospitals and surgical centers that offer lower prices and higher quality by specializing in certain disease states and procedures.  By doing so they have been undercutting the big central hospital business model.  Think big box retailing versus the traditional shopping mall.  But think of it as if the Feds passed a law supported by the shopping malls saying that no one but shopping mall owners could build additional shopping centers.

This little-noticed but particularly egregious aspect of Obamacare is, by all accounts, a concession to the powerful American Hospital Association (AHA), a supporter of Obamacare, which prefers to have its member hospitals operate without competition from hospitals owned by doctors. Dr. Michael Russell, president of Physician Hospitals of America, which has filed suit to try to stop this selective building-ban from going into effect, says, “There are so many regulations [in Obamacare] and they are so onerous and intrusive that we believe that the section [Section 6001] was deliberately designed so no physician owned hospital could successfully comply.” 


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.” 

Classic liberal corporatism:  entrenching an existing economic power group by banning its upstart, innovative competition.  Obamacare (and every other piece of legislation passed by the Obami in the last two years) is lousy with this sort of corrupt special dealing - call it the "Chicago Way".

This is how economies die.  Just ask Illinois.  And Greece.  Read the whole thing.


No comments:

Post a Comment