No more independent hospitals

Back in the day, all hospitals were run independently. There were many small town hospitals. There were 2-3 hospitals in larger cities. This was good because it created lots of competition. It made it so prices were low.

But, healthcare costs were still high - higher than people liked. So they complained. They said, "Something needs to be done." And when people say things like that, what they are implying is that the government needs to do something.

And that's what lead to Obamacare. And part of Obamacare made it easier for hospitals to merge. At the same time, the made it so Medicare will no longer reimburse for readmissions. For example, if you have a patient with a diagnosis of COPD, Medicare won't reimburse if that patient is readmitted within 30 days. It doesn't matter if the patient was admitted for COPD one day, and two weeks later admitted for a hangnail. Reimbursement will be refused for that patient.

When this passed, my boss came to me. He said, "We are done as an independent hospital." A few years later he was proved right. Our hospital merged with a larger hospital chain. We, in effect, became a small cog in a socialist wheel. Our sovereignty was taken away.

I personally think this was done on purpose. I think the entire premise of Obamacare was part of an agenda. They said things like, "If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor." They said that Obamacare will drive down the cost of healthcare. And none of this ever happened. In fact, healthcare is worse now than ever before.

That I think was done on purpose. They said all those nice things to sell it. Then they sold it. And, Obamacare was passed in 2010. It was heralded as a huge success. But, then it was enacted. And what my boss said came true. Our hospital was forced to merge. And other small, once independently run hospitals were forced to merge. Some closed their doors altogether.

Obamacare also forced other changes. It forced the changeover of some older equipment. Cat Scans used to take a long time. You'd sit in one 10-20 minutes. But, you still got good results. Now, hospitals have very expensive CT equipment. It's the best. It's top notch. You only have to sit in it for minutes and you're done. That's great. But, it also comes with a cost.

The old way would never have bought this new CT equipment. That's simply not good business. In order to keep prices down they stuck with the older equipment. People didn't like to sit inside them for so long. But, they liked that these tests were affordable.

A good analogy here are airplanes. The technology exists to make airplanes fly real fast. You could fly from NY to Boston in less than an hour. You could fly in extreme luxury and be done in less than an hour. But, to do this planes would have to use up a lot of gas.  So, rather than paying $300 you'd have to pay $10,000 for a flight. People aren't willing to do that. They'd rather sit on a plane for 3-10 hours and be miserable all that time, in exchange for a fair price.

That's a good analogy to explain what's wrong with Obamacare. Not just Obamacare, I don't want to just pick on Obamacare. But, Government is not always the right answer.

Another example is all the computer charting we do. It's awesome. Really! It's great. But, it also costs billions of dollars to do. It took a lot to set up. And, in the process, there were a lot of setbacks. This didn't work and that didn't work. A good example is the Obamacare webpage.  I mean, how much money did that disaster cost before they got it right. Lots of money wasted and lost before they finally got it right.

So, many of the things Obamacare brought to us are good. Computer charting is a great example. But, the fact that it cost so much is why smaller independent hospitals didn't go that route. And that is why healthcare costs increase due to government intervention, they do not decrease.

And we will never see a decrease in healthcare costs until we realize that more government is not the answer.

Look, people say, "We need to do something." So, Uncle Sam does something. And all it does is make the problem worse. Then they say, "We need to do something again." So, they do. More changes are forced on us -- more regulations. And, this doesn't fix anything. And this just causes an endless cycle of "We need to do something" to "change" to more problems.

I again ask the question: "When does this stop?" When do we stop and ask ourselves, "How do we really fix the healthcare crisis?" Is more government really the answer?

I think it is not. I think we ought to do the opposite. I think it's time to try capitalism. Let's break up these monopolies. Let's allow hospitals to compete with one another.

Right now, if one person makes a bad decision, all the hospitals in a chain fail. But, if all these hospitals were independent and able to make their own decisions, the ones that make bad decisions will fail. Other hospitals won't copy those ideas. But, those who make good decisions that result in low prices and happy customers will be copied by others. It's called capitalism.

Capitalism is where your success is determined by how much money you make. But, how much money you make is determined by how happy you make your customers.