Baton Rouge Emergency Room Closing Shows Cost Of Obamacare Fight [View all]

[DonViejo]

By Margaret Newkirk, Bloomberg News(TNS)

ATLANTA — A Baton Rouge, Louisiana, hospital is closing the only emergency room on the city’s impoverished north side, a real-world ripple effect of the ideological clash over President Barack Obama’s health care law.

The shutdown on April first serves as an early warning for hospitals in states like Louisiana, where Republican Governor Bobby Jindal turned down federal money to expand the Medicaid program for the poor. Charity hospitals will lose billions of federal aid beginning late next year, a cut that was supposed to be offset as more residents were covered by Medicaid.

The combination is a looming “double whammy,” said Shawn Gremminger, a lobbyist for America’s Essential Hospitals in Washington, which represents those that care for the poor. “It’s not survivable,” he said. “Hospitals are going to close.”

In Louisiana, Baton Rouge General’s Mid City hospital was already caught in that vise. It was flooded with the uninsured after a nearby charity hospital was closed. Louisiana provided a one-time injection of funds last year from the federal aid program that’s about to be cut. With that money gone, the hospital is closing the emergency room.

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http://www.nationalmemo.com/baton-rouge-emergency-room-closing-shows-cost-of-obamacare-fight/