Mergers, Universal Healthcare Causes Fewer Job Options

There are lots of hospitals. In the past, most hospitals were independently owned. This was good. It meant more competition and lower prices. It means lots of job opportunities. If you grew tired or your current place of employment, you just applied at another hospital. Same was true if you got fired. You just moved on. 

Today, with all the mergers, it's not so easy to move on. You have large hospital groups merging with smaller hospitals. You even have larger hospitals merging with other larger hospitals. They are doing this at record levels since Obamacare was signed into law in 2010.

Now, I don't mean to get political. I just want to explain how Obamacare is responsible for all these mergers. There are two stipulations in Obamacare that almost forced this on us. 

One, is a stipulation that makes it easier for hospitals to merge. This makes mergers possible. 

Two, is a stipulation where Medicare will no longer reimburse for patients who are readmitted within 30 days of discharge. This was done to lower costs to Medicare. It gave Medicare good reason to decline payment. But, it also encourages mergers. The writers of Obamacare knew small hospitals would want to stay independent. This stipulation made it so smaller hospitals would be, maybe not forced, but highly incentivized to merge. 

I think this was done on purpose. With only a few large hospital groups, it would be easier to merge them into one universal health system. 

Sure, there may be some good arguments in favor of universal healthcare. You may be a supporter of it. But, I here want to give you a great argument against it. And that is that you will have no options if you don't like your current job. There will be no alternative places to work. 

Sure, you could still switch to a different hospital. But, you won't be able to escape the system. And if you get fired, there won't be other hospital systems out there to hire you. If you get fired, you will be unemployable. 

Nurses would have more options. Nurses can work outside hospitals. But, we respiratory therapists can only work in hospitals. So, this is good reason for all of us to be very scared of the threat of universal healthcare.