Hello fellow bloggers,
my name is Dr. Dean Rothmann and I am the managing director at Holy Child general Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. Firstly I must say that I do believe that the idea of Obamacare is good at its core. As a physician myself I strongly believe in the concept of affordable health care for the general population of the United States of America. The Medicare/Mediaid system was based too much on income and the capitalistic system. By this I mean that your financial stability dictated the quality of your healthcare, which is not the way it is supposed to be. One's health should not be dependent on his or her wealth.
I had very high hopes for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act when it was passed in March of 2010. I knew that as a managing director of a public hospital I may see some pay-cuts, but I saw it was a fair trade-off for a social change in the country. Now, almost four years later, I cannot believe my eyes. The great concept of Obamacare has been so heavily altered that it does not even resemble what it once was. My hospital, Holy Child general, has been going through very rough times since the passing of Obamacare. I myself and my employees have been experiencing heavy salary cuts. If this not not bad enough the Obama Administration micromanages us on a daily basis. Due to "procedural errors" my hospital has been fined nearly 200 000$! These penalties have really cut into our cash flows and have partially handicapped our capabilities to help our patients. And this only because we did not exactly adhere to Obamacare's complicated and bureaucratic system. Obamacare is trying to change the way we have been doing things since the hospital was founded in 1940. For my hospital to uphold the highest standard of medicine, we cannot be micromanaged and fined like this. It simply will not have a positive outcome if the situation does not change quickly!
Top tier hospitals such as Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland are beginning to raise the same concerns and are opting to no longer cooperate with Obamacare. If there is no change soon I will be forced to do the same for the well being of my staff, hospital and most important of all my patients.
The situation we are currently in reminds me much of Langston Hughes' poem "A Dream Differed". I just hope this differed dream does not explode!
Thank you so much for your great contribution to the discussion Dr.Rothmann! Your post has truly given his blog more depth. For our readers, Dr. Rothmann is focusing his argument on the fact that Obamacare has been micromanaging his hospital and that they have paid an excess of 200 000$ in fines due to "procedural errors". For this reason, much like other top hospitals in the nation, he has opted against Obamacare and wants to have it repealed.
ReplyDelete