Wrong Reform: Targeting Physician Owned Hospitals

Healthcare in the United States is in a fiscal crisis. We can all agree on that. House Bill 2 is billed as funding healthcare for uninsured children. Everyone should be able to agree that we need this.

However, our congressfolk are up to their usual antics. This time, they have used this needed bill for their own political gain to tack on unrelated language aimed at shutting down the best hospitals in the country.

This added language in this bill has been thrown around by the big lobbying groups for so many times that last year they tried to add it to the Farm Bill! Now, however, the legislation intended to help needy uninsured children has been Washingtonized in an effort to outlaw physician-owned hospitals.

I don’t know about you, but if you’ve been a patient at a physician owned hospital and compare the experience to Not For Profit (NFP) Hospitals, it’s clear that the physician-owned hospitals are superior. Everything from the medical care to the appearance of the facility is measureably better in a physician owned hospital.

For example, for joint replacement, Oklahoma Surgical Hospital gets the HealthGrades 5 star rating year after year. The NFP hospitals in Tulsa may are usually luck to get a 3 star rating.

Why? Simply because with the doctor owns the hospital, they buy the best equipment. When a big box corporation (or the Vatican)runs it, there is no incentive to provide the best patient care and you have lackluster equipment.

Also, when the doctors own the hospitals, they pay the nurses and other real hospital staff more. At NFP hospitals across the country, for example, nursese and other staff are underpaid and overworked.

The worst part? The so-called Not For Profit hospitals don’t pay any taxes at all. Some NFP hospitals in the Tulsa area include St. John and St. Francis. For example, St. Francis usually makes 40-90 Million dollars in PROFIT each year, yet don’t pay any taxes on this income because of their so-called Not For Profit status. Want to talk about your tax loopholes! For many of the NFP hospitals, the money goes out of the community to corporations in other states.

Not so at physician-owned hospitals--these hospitals pay taxes, supporting the communities that they operate in.

Lastly, The NFP hospitals want to tout that they provide all of the charity care, but in actuality, less than 5 percent of their care is actual charity care. And we the taxpayers give them those big breaks when more than 95% of the care they provide they get paid on.

So in summary, NFP hospitals make tons of money that isn’t taxed (i.e., doesn’t support the economy), provide inferior care for doing so. They make millions each year that they don’t pay taxes on because of loopholes, yet they refuse pay their nurses adequately or spend capital on needed improvements in technology.

Yet, the greedy NFP hospitals, backed by the American Hospital Association and their big healthcare lobbyists want to quash the only hospitals in their communities creating real value and delivering consistently outstanding healthcare outcomes (as measured by independent organizations such as HealthGrades). I encourage you to call both of your senators and encourage them to vote against the SCIP bill until the special interest language limiting physician-owned hospitals and benefiting greedy corporate NFP hospitals is rightfully removed.

For more information see the link below...

http://sev.prnewswire.com/health-care-hospitals/20090115/LA5924115012009-1.html

Overview

This blog focuses on American healthcare system, it's problems, it's positives and some of the real problems it faces.

For years, everyone in Washington has been faced with the facts and chosen to ignore them. Healthcare funding in the US is in crisis mode because of pure demographic numbers--there are more older people in Medicare than there are younger workers to pay for Medicare.

Our Congressfolk, presidents and beaurocrats have ignored this problem because they didn't want to deal with it. I can understand it because it can't be dealt with by our government. Our government is too slow, to mucked up in red tape to help. Now, we're told that the answer is increased regulation.

The problem is that government regulation is what is causing our healthcare system to deteriorate. There are too many restrictions on doctors and hospitals. Our Congressional leaders are more concerned about passing new pet regulations for their big contributors than to listen to common sense people in the field.

That sounds dire, but there is hope. In this blog I hope to outline some clear steps that our country can take to improve the system and prevent a healthcare armageddon.