That Obamacare...it's really working.

Again and again we ask why Obamacare is not good for the nation and the list of answers keep adding up. Here is another.

ObamaCare’s Victims: Physician-Owned Specialty Hospitals — And You

Among ObamaCare’s very early casualties were physician-owned specialty hospitals. These had long been targeted for extinction by the Big Hospital Lobby — i.e., the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals. With the sweeping health law, they finally succeeded in stopping any new ones from being built after 2010. Here’s an IBD article about the issue back in March, 2010.

In short, the Big Hospital Lobby tried for years to get politicians to deny physician-owned specialty centers access to Medicare, a major source of revenue. How that happened is the subject of an in-depth article I’ve written that has now been published by The New Individualist.

The struggle between The Big Hospital Lobby and physician-owned specialty hospitals is a classic case of big, politically connected businesses using government to squash the smaller competition. Expect to see more of that now that ObamaCare has put even more of our health care resources under government control. One effect is that you will see less innovation in health care as smaller, more-nimble competitors often come up with new and better treatments and care.

Patients will suffer from a lack of choice:

Ultimately, it is the patient who should decide what type of hospital he or she should use since it is the patient who will be paying the personal cost if the decision is the wrong one. The patient is the one who will endure an unpleasant recovery in the hospital, experience pain if there are surgical complications, suffer a readmission after being discharged or, ultimately, die. Politicians, the Big Hospital Lobby, physicians, hospital administrators — none of them pays those costs. It is the patient who has the best incentive to make the right decision as to whether a physician-owned specialty hospital, or a general hospital, or some other surgical facility is the best place to have surgery.

Unfortunately, powerful political interests use Medicare in ways that limit the ability of patients to make the health care choices that best suit them. And that’s a prescription for an enduring and growing health care crisis.

There are two sidebars to the article. The first is an inside look at the efficiencies and innovations of a physician-owned specialty hospital, McBride Orthopedic. The second is an examination of the bureaucratic inefficiencies of a general hospital.

Which would you prefer to be treated in? Doesn’t matter. That choice is being taken away from you by people who know how to manage your health care better than you do.

The last sentence says it all. Your authority to manage your health care decisions is being taken away from you and given to the bureaucracy. It can be argued that the advent of HMOs did something similar since the 1970s but a business (which health care is) can be held accountable. Appeals, taking your business elsewhere, lawsuits in civil court, etc. Once Obamacare goes to where it's planned (single payer health care) where will you appeal? Who will offer you a choice of providers? And do you really think we will be able to sue in court.

Again, let us pray SCOTUS rules right in the next few months.