Sunday, December 28, 2008

Hospitals ill from more bad debt, credit troubles



http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Hospitals-ill-from-more-bad-apf-13922466.html

Nice:

Like many U.S. hospitals, Shands is being squeezed by tight credit, higher borrowing costs, investment losses and a jump in patients -- many recently unemployed or otherwise underinsured -- not paying their bills.

All that has begun to trigger more hospital closings -- from impoverished Newark, N.J., to wealthy Beverly Hills, Calif. -- as well as layoffs, other cost-cutting and scrapping or delaying building projects.

More closings and mergers are on the way, industry consultants predict.


Personally, I think they're being politically correct. The illegal immigrants were flooding the ER system long before the recession, particularly in TX, CA, and NY. Now the American citizens are rolling in and the system is going bankrupt. It's convenient, politically, to lump everyone under "poor" now. (The illegals still have something going for them when it comes to bills, though: they can skip town and run across the border.) I guess the total load of poor people now is politically convenient for pushing in socialized healthcare, since it affects multiple groups.

Ron Paul made some comments about how the left thinks that certain things are rights that freedom-loving people don't think are rights. Healthcare is one of the things that the left thinks is a fundamental right.

The left's thinking on this matter doesn't jive with rationality or the market. Their "solutions" always get victimized by adverse selection. When Michael Moore compared socialized healthcare to the mail system or the SS-check system, he mislead the public and didn't say a word about adverse selection. It's all a bag of magic in Michael Moore's head. (Though, I still like his documentaries -- as comedies.)

In 10 years, I suspect most people will just fly to India or China for serious healthcare. For minor things, they will just smuggle anti-biotics and drugs from overseas. Perhaps a black market for anesthetics will be created so people with broken arms can remain numb until they land in India.

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