And It Begins: Obamacare Resulting in Cuts in Healthcare Industry

HuffPo reports:

It looks like Obamacare is having some negative effects on the industry it was intended to help.

Dr. Nick Turkal, CEO of Wisconsin-based non-profit health care provider Aurora Health Care, announced earlier this month that his employer would be cutting jobs due to Obamacare, The Journal Times reports. In a letter to employees he wrote that the company would be receiving $13 million less in government reimbursements forcing it to make “position eliminations plus discontinuation of some positions in the coming weeks.”

The cuts will be small considering Aurora’s 30,000 current employees but things could get worse in the future. Already, staff has been instructed to cut costs by avoiding making color copies; physicians serving Medicare patients may receive a cut in payments.

“We don’t want people to be afraid, but things are different,” Aurora spokeswoman Myrle Croasdale told the Journal Times.

Aurora isn’t the only one in the health care industry to claim Obamacare is forcing layoffs. Orlando Health, a Florida network of community and specialty hospitals, said it would be laying off 400 employees due to new Obamacare costs, One News Now reports. Likewise, small medical device company ADM Tronics says Obamacare will mean the company will have to lay off employees for the first time in over a decade, according to Fox News.

Obamacare won't have the same impact, at first anyway, on crony healthcare insider firms. What is going on is small firms are now having to deal with onerous new regulations (and government funding shrink for them), in favor of the the crony operators who are close to government. As time goes on the regulations will become more severe, forcing more cutbacks and less choices for patients. Ultimately, the US healthcare industry will look like the old Soviet shoe industry.