Headed for Third-World Healthcare

Obamacare was designed to improve access to health care for all Americans but critics say the law officially known as Affordable Care Act is causing many rural hospitals to close.

Those facilities in small towns across America serve many of society's most vulnerable, poorest patients — those least aware of how to stay healthy. Hospital officials contend that the law's penalties for having to re-admit patients soon after they're released are impossible to avoid and create a crushing burden.

Since 2010, 43 rural hospitals have closed, according to data from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program and the pace of closures is quickening.

Back in the 1940s the federal government did much to create a network of rural hospitals to ensure even those living in sparsely populated areas would have access to health care. It was also a consideration point during the push for the new health law. But rural hospital officials and others say that federal regulators are now starving the hospitals they created with policies and reimbursement rates that make it nearly impossible for them to stay afloat.

The crux of the problem involves low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements hurting these hospitals because more than larger hospitals it's how most of their patients are insured, if they are at all.

Some experts think one-third of all American hospitals will close by the year 2020.



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