Tuesday Mashup (10/12/10)

J.D. Mullane of the Bucks County Courier Times took to his odious blog recently here to blame the pending sale of Mercy Health Partners in Scranton, PA on “Obamacare.”

As noted here, though…

"Actually we're doing well. We're ahead of budget for the year. It's more that when we look out over the landscape of health care over the next five years and the needs of these facilities, the needs of this community, we understand a different level of investment will be needed than what we can do on our own," (Mercy Health Partners CEO Kevin) Cook said.

They said much of that required investment is the result of the health care reform bill passed in Washington.

The CEO said it means the need for more spending and less federal reimbursements.

"Health care reform is absolutely playing a role. Was it the precipitating factor in this decision? No, but was it a factor in our planning over the next five years? Absolutely," Cook added.

OK, I realize this doesn’t completely validate my criticism of Mullane, because Cook is saying that HCR “play(ed) a role.”

However, I think the following should be noted from here…

Discussions concerning mergers, acquisitions and strategic partnerships have been conducted in the healthcare community for years--long before the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The decision announced this week was due to many factors.

Also, from here…

Still, the acquisition trend is likely to pale in comparison to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when for-profit companies such as Columbia/HCA (now the Hospital Corp. of America) and Tenet Healthcare snapped up non-profit hospitals at a rapid clip.

No one is predicting that most hospitals will become for-profit entities. Almost three-fifths of the more than 5,000 hospitals in the USA are non-profit, while an additional one-fifth are for-profit and the rest are government-run, according to the American Hospital Association.

But hospital mergers-and-acquisitions tend to go in boom-and-bust cycles. "My guess is that this is entering a period of expansion again," says Gerard Anderson, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management.

One big reason is that the new health overhaul law will eventually extend coverage to an additional 32 million people, reducing the financial burden of the DMC and other hospitals that treat a lot of uninsured patients. "Health reform gets rid of a big chunk of the uncompensated care problem," making urban hospitals more attractive acquisition targets, says Jack Wheeler, a professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan.

"Detroit, Boston, Chicago — these are not hotbeds" of for-profit hospitals, he says. Traditionally, most acquisitions by for-profit hospitals have been in the Sun Belt and suburban areas with few uninsured patients and high population growth. But some urban non-profit hospitals are struggling to get credit and see deals with for-profit companies as their best option.

Soo…my reading of this is that, though nonprofit hospitals will now be at the not-so-tender mercies of for-profits, that might be the best way for patients to get the care they need.

OR, as ICU Nurse Lori Brown put in the USA Today story about the pending purchase of the Detroit Medical Center by Vanguard Health Systems…

"In the beginning, we were concerned about whether it would be good for our minority population, but it doesn't sound like that part will change," she says. "We'll continue to be the hospital that takes care of everyone. We don't turn anyone away."

This is part of what is so ridiculous about what passes for the health care debate in this country. You could argue that the new law passed this year will usher in more cost controls and take a hard look at procedures and treatments that might not provide the best outcomes for all.

But that is going on anyway, and it’s better to have the government as a player in this process ostensibly representing us than it is to allow the private sector free rein to do what it wants, including dropping subscribers when they need coverage the most and refusing treatment for pre-existing conditions.

In fewer words – if J.D. Mullane wants a return to those days, he should have the guts to say so.

And staying with this topic, I give you the following from here…

The Republican running against Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) recently compared the Democrats' healthcare reform bill to the Fugitive Slave Act.

State lawmaker Scott Bruun (R) told a crowd in Canby, Ore., during an Oct. 7 speech that the healthcare bill was "right up there" with the infamous slave act.

"I would argue that from a fiscal perspective, it's probably the worst piece of legislation this nation's ever passed," Bruun said during a speech that was recorded by a Democratic campaign tracker.

Let's count down to the "walk back," people - three, two, one...

Bruun's campaign was quick to issue a statement denying he was making a direct comparison between the two pieces of legislation.

The healthcare bill, Brunn said, "pales in comparison … to laws that promoted the exploitation of humans, and I would never compare such reprehensible actions to any of the legislation passed by this Congress — no matter how flawed they might be."

"It saddens me that my comments at a recent forum were construed as anything different, and for Democrats to suggest that I have ever placed this abhorrent law on the same level as the healthcare bill is not only false, but shows the true depth of their desperation."

Uh, actually comparing the health care law to the Fugitive Slave Act shows the true depth of your idiocy, Scott.

This, however, is par for the proverbial course for Bruun, who flip-flopped here on “cap and trade,” flip-flopped here on privatizing Social Security (“Doesn’t support privatizing but does support reform of entitlements”…what does that mean?), and as noted here, the individual or company responsible for his web site couldn’t even spell his name properly, nor was that mistake caught by his campaign.

Rather than expound any more about how Scott Bruun is just another “Just Say No” boilerplate Repug from the RNC/Karl Rove cookie cutter factory, I’ll merely provide this link to Kurt Schrader’s web site; at this point, helping Bruun’s opponent is a much more productive exercise than pointing out that which is stupidly obvious.

Finally, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, I give you the following wingnuttery (from here, page 2)…

We keep hearing that Guantanamo, etc. are major recruitment tools for our enemies, even though there is little empirical evidence to support this proposition.

Actually, as noted here…

…military and FBI interrogators have stated that terrorists have successfully used the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as a recruiting device, and at least two reports have reached the same conclusion.

For instance, using the pseudonym Matthew Alexander, an Air Force senior interrogator who was in Iraq in 2006 wrote: "I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq."

Moreover, as the blog Think Progress noted, in June 17, 2008, testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Alberto Mora, former Navy general counsel, said: "[T]here are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."

And by the way, as Wikipedia tells us, the decision not to respond militarily was that of Dubya, with Our Gal Condi Rice saying that Commander Codpiece "made clear to us that he did not want to respond to al Qaeda one attack at a time. He told me he was 'tired of swatting flies.'"

It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that, with that remark, our 43rd president was equating 17 dead American sailors with insects.