While Democrats claim to be trying to “save Medicare” from being destroyed by the Republicans, in reality, Medicare, which provides health care benefits to elderly and disabled persons, is being dismantled step-by-step at the behest of the capitalist establishment. Meanwhile, nothing has or will be done by the Obama administration to curtail the obscene profits harvested by parasitic insurance companies which are the real reason why the U.S. health system is falling apart.
Beginning Oct. 1, hospitals are being penalized to the tune of millions of dollars for patients who are readmitted within 30 days after discharge. Right now, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the government agency that administers Medicare, is focusing on three disease processes, including heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia.
In what amounts to one of the greatest failures of the Affordable Care Act, re-admission penalties for early re-admits are the highest penalties to be imposed on hospitals. Public hospitals in urban centers, which serve Black, Latino and poor workers, many with no insurance, are already incurring the greatest penalties.
No patient wants to be re-admitted, and hospitals, especially not-for-profit facilities that serve poor and oppressed communities, also want to streamline discharges. But—reality check—the real reasons for high readmission rates lie outside the hospital doors.
Community health programs, all but wiped out in recent decades by non-stop cuts, are an essential part of providing health care to communities. Such programs are crucial in providing in-home services, making sure people have their medications, proper nutrition, access to transportation to get to appointments, education about medications and disease management, safety, and more. CMS, which denies funding for many needed programs in the community, is punishing hospitals for a broken health care system that has been devastated increasingly over the years by the profit system.
For decades, Medicare has pushed hospitals to discharge patients quickly and has cut off reimbursement when according to Medicare guidelines patients no longer meet criteria for inpatient care. But patients who are discharged too soon, before they are fully stabilized, are bound to be back in the emergency room within a few days or weeks. Now, in an irrational move to curb costs, hospitals are penalized for doing what they were told.
The United States is pushing its health care system over the cliff. The suffering of millions could be avoided with planning and comprehensive community health programs that include basic care and comfort, healing and most of all preventive care.
It is a disgrace that the richest country in the world is making poor and working people pay for the financial problems of the ruling class. If the Affordable Care Act is the best the ruling class can do, then they are no longer fit to rule.
