Commonwealth Fund Report Finds that the GOP Health Care Act Would Reverse Gains Made by Community Hospitals
One of the Obama administration’s big selling points in enacting the Affordable Care Act in 2010 was that by expanding Medicaid insurance for many of the nation’s poor, the law would begin to relieve community hospitals of the mounting cost of providing routine treatment to indigent patients in their emergency rooms.
Uncompensated health care had become a massive drain on hospital budgets, greatly adding to the nation’s overall medical costs, which were passed along to other patients or local government in the form of higher hospital fees and charges.
As House Republicans savor their major victory Thursday in narrowly passing their highly controversial and little-understood plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, it’s instructive to consider some of the highly positive fiscal achievements of Obamacare that likely will be washed away if House and Senate GOP leaders and the White House ultimately settle on a compromise approach...