How do you explain someone doing everything he can to harm America’s business climate?
Is it due to economic ignorance? Or is it intentional?
You tell us why President Barack Obama has taken such a strong anti-business approach to American enterprise:
- In January, U.S. businesses will suffer a huge jolt — a 40-percent increase in taxation
- Obama said: “There will be a time for them to make profits and to give bonuses. Now is not that time.”
- Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, and other Democrats have been disparaging the coal industry that is so vital to the nation’s economic interests and infrastructure
- The Obama Administration is telling companies providing crucial jobs for families they don’t have to be involved in business if they want to observe their religious beliefs in the work place
- The Administration’s HHS mandate will so severely fine businesses refusing to offer insurance for objectionable, life-ending drugs to their employees that they could be substantially crippled or forced to close their doors
Each of these is equally troubling in a time of economic instability, when every industry and every job is so crucial to America’s families. Companies that don’t make profits go out of business.
So why is Obama risking economic disaster with his willingness to close down businesses, put people out of work, and hinder people’s ability to feed and house their families?
Tell us in the survey below what you think:
More on Obama, the Anti-Business President
More than 2,200 hospitals face penalties under ObamaCare rules
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/23/more-than-2200-hospitals-face-penalties-for-high-readmissions/#ixzz24o5jt9zn
By Jonathan Serrie, Fox News
Aug. 23, 2012
A provision of ObamaCare is set to punish roughly two-thirds of U.S. hospitals evaluated by Medicare starting this fall over high readmission rates, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News.
Starting in October, Medicare will reduce reimbursements to hospitals with high 30-day readmission rates — which refers to patients who return within a month — by as much as 1 percent. The maximum penalty increases to 2 percent the following year and 3 percent in 2014.
Doctors are concerned the penalty is unfair, since sometimes they have to accept patients more than once in a brief period of time but could be penalized for doing so — even for accepting seniors who are sick.
“Among patients with heart failure, hospitals that have higher readmission rates actually have lower mortality rates,” said Sunil Kripalani, MD, a professor with Vanderbilt University Medical Center who studies hospital readmissions. “So, which would we rather have — a hospital readmission or a death?”
But according to federal government figures, nearly one in five Medicare patients is readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of release, costing taxpayers an estimated $17.5 billion.
“Readmissions has been a low-hanging fruit for Medicare,” said Jordan Rau, a staff writer with KHN, an editorially independent program of the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “They’ve been very unhappy that about 2 million Medicare beneficiaries are being readmitted every year between 30 days of discharge.”
Medicare evaluated readmission rates at 3,367 of the nation’s hospitals and will impose penalties on 2,211 starting in October, according to KHN. The analysis shows 278 hospitals will receive this year’s maximum penalty of 1 percent. On the other side of the spectrum, 50 hospitals will receive the minimum penalty of 0.01 percent, KHN reports.
The penalties are intended to create financial incentives for the quality of care hospitals provide, instead of the number of procedures. But physicians debate whether readmission rates are the best measure of outcomes.
Kripalani and some other physicians are concerned that readmissions-based penalties may have a disproportionate effect on research hospitals because they handle large numbers of complex cases.
“Often these kinds of institutions take care of the most sick patients,” Kripalani said. “They’re sent patients by other hospitals because of specific expertise they have. So, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that some of the nation’s best hospitals do have slightly higher readmission rates compared to other hospitals.”
The list of hospitals facing penalties includes nationally known names such as Vanderbilt, University of Chicago Medical Center and Massachusetts General, according to Medicare data compiled by KHN.
Some physicians are also concerned about what impact Medicare penalties will have on “safety-net” hospitals that treat large numbers of poor patients with limited access to primary and followup care. However, researchers who helped Medicare develop its quality assessment guidelines say the measures take into account the relative illness of patients coming into each hospital.
“The readmission measures are risk-adjusted measures,” said Susannah Bernheim, MD, director of quality measurement programs at Yale School of Medicine’s Center for Outcomes Research & Evaluation (CORE). “So, if safety-net hospitals are caring for patients that are generally sicker, that’s going to be accounted for by the measures. What I think is really remarkable is how well many safety-net hospitals in this country do on the readmission measure.”
Bernheim added that the risk-adjustment also applies to research/teaching hospitals serving the sickest patients.
“These measures represent what a patient really experiences,” Bernheim said. “And as long as they’re designed in a scientifically sound way, they’re going to really help move the quality of our health care system forward in meaningful ways.”
Physicians debate how much control hospitals actually have over readmission rates since many patients return after failing to follow recommended outpatient treatment, medication and dietary guidelines.
But faced with penalties, the nation’s medical centers now have a financial incentive to seek improvements to the way they follow up with patients after they’re released.
“There’s a real question and a real heavy debate about whether it’s fair to hold the hospital responsible for that,” Rau of Kaiser Health News said. “Medicare’s answer has been that the problem overall with the health care system is that no one’s ever in charge. And so they’ve decided to tell the hospitals, ‘Like it or not, your fault or not, you’re in charge.'”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/23/more-than-2200-hospitals-face-penalties-for-high-readmissions/#ixzz24o5TzLW3
By Erin Smith
Washington Times
President Obama seems to think single women are one-issue voters. He sees himself as a dashing knight, promising to rescue us from the evil dragon of abortion being outlawed and to provide us with access to free birth control throughout the kingdom. Single women are not damsels in reproductive health care distress, and they vote on a plethora of issues.
Single women, like most other demographic groups, care about the economy. Mr. Obama’s lack of experience and poor economic leadership have gutted our economic prosperity. Our unemployment rate proves this point. Unemployment among single women is 11.6 percent, which is 40 percent greater than the official national average. Mr. Obama’s failed economic policies have eroded the independence of single women. As a group, we are worse off now than we have been in decades. Many of us can no longer support our dependents or ourselves.
Mr. Obama’s record shows he is not trying to empower and improve the position of single women in America. His economic policies have chipped away at our independence over the past 31/2 years. Rather than acknowledging that, he staged a fake battle in an imaginary Republican war on women so he could appear to fight on our behalf. His campaign wants us to support him simply because he offers reproductive health care options that we already have. He thinks he can buy us off by pandering to the stereotype of the persecuted female in need of government protection and goodies such as subsidized birth control.
Single women don’t need that kind of patronization. We can look at the facts. Abortion is the law of the land. It is unlikely to be completely outlawed in America. This is not my opinion, but logic and the national consensus. Since Roe v. Wade, there have been more pro-life presidential years than pro-choice years, but overturning Roe has never come to the forefront of a pro-life presidential agenda. If, however improbably, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the ruling would leave abortion laws up to the states. The legal opinion of Harvard Law School graduate Mitt Romney is that abortion should be an issue dealt with by the states, not the federal government. It’s a reasonable position to have.
Mr. Romney is offering single women solid, independence-building choices. A Romney administration will give us the opportunity to better our lives by bringing back a strong, vibrant economy that rewards our efforts. I encourage all single women to look at the facts and choose your president as you would choose a doctor, college, career or any other important decision that affects the outcome of your life and lifestyle.
Ask important, relevant questions such as: Which candidate is the most successful — personally and professionally? Which candidate has a proven track record of creating jobs and economic growth? Which candidate is looking out for my long-term best interests, supporting policies that will enable me to support myself? Which candidate will encourage a position of financial independence, free from reliance on government, men and charity? What are my long-term goals and dreams, and can I achieve them if the country continues on its path of economic stagnation and shrinking opportunity?
The answer to these questions is Mr. Romney.
Single women want lives of happiness and dignity that only come from financial security in a growing economy. We must base our votes upon which candidate can lead us to an economic future and not the red herring of abortion “rights.”
Read more: SMITH: Single gals choose Romney – Washington Times