What's wrong with Obamacare? »

election:

Paul Ryan doesn’t se em be entirely sure.*

But fortunately, this article explains, in detail, the involvement and motivation of the Big Hospital lobby in supporting Obama’s health care reform, and how it pertains to restricting competition by dealing a lethal blow to Physician-Owned Specialty Hospitals (PSHs). It’s worth a read, especially if you’re interested in the politics behind, and the content of, Obamacare—it’s not like you’re going to get factual answers from any of the candidates.

A select few stats I picked from the [fairly lengthy, but very solid] article on the fatal inefficiencies of general hospitals:

One academic study measured the efficiency of transferring patients between different units of a hospital by examining how the process was affected by administrative delays, unavailable beds, unavailable staff, the readiness of units to receive patients and breakdowns in communication. The process was over 87% inefficient. (Nursing Economics, July-August 2005 pp. 157-164)

An article in Health Services Research found that hospital “outputs”—patient admissions, outpatient visits, surgeries, and births—could be increased 26% by eliminating inefficiency. (October 2008, Vol. 43, No. 5, Part II, pp. 1830-1848)

Different hospital departments often do not relay information effectively to each other. One study in the Journal of Healthcare Management suggests that hospitals waste $12 billion annually on inefficient communication. (July-August 2010, Vol. 55, No. 4, pp. 419-431)

A study examining “hospitalists”—physicians who focus solely on the management of hospital inpatients—found that hospitals that employ them could reduce the average patient length of stay by about 37% and average per admission costs by almost 24%. (Health Services Research, June 2003, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 905-918)

Inefficiency affects patient mortality. An article in Health Economics found that a one-percentage point reduction in a hospital’s cost inefficiency was associated with one fewer death per 10,000 patient discharges.(2006, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 419-431)

*I have seen a very eloquent explanation by him of how Obamacare actually increases health care costs and only appears to decrease them because of accounting involving money laundering—not sure what happened in the VP debate.

—Caitlyn