Hospitals Suffering From Mass Layoffs Thanks to Obamacare

Hospitals Suffering From Mass Layoffs Thanks to Obamacare

Katie Pavlich | Oct 15, 2013


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When Obamacare was shoved down the throats of the American people in 2010, doctors, people in the medical industry and conservatives warned the legislation would be a major job killer and guess what? It is.
Last month we saw the Cleveland Clinic, a place Obama touted as the future of healthcare, cutting jobs in order to prepare for Obamacare.

The world-renowned Cleveland Clinic said on Wednesday it would cut jobs and slash five to six percent of its $6 billion annual budget to prepare for President Barack Obama's health reforms.

The clinic, which has treated celebrities and world leaders such as musician Lou Reed, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former Olympic gold medal skater Scott Hamilton, did not say how many of its 44,000 employees would be laid off. But a spokeswoman said that $330 million would be cut from its annual budget.

Now, major hospitals around the country are doing the same.

Health care providers announced more layoffs than any other industry last month — 8,128 — largely because of reductions by hospitals, according to outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas. So far this year, the health care sector has announced 41,085 layoffs, the third-most behind financial and industrial companies.

Total private hospital employment is still up by 36,000 in the past 12 months, but it's down by 8,000 since April, and more staff reductions are expected into next year.

This month, Indiana University Health laid off about 900 workers as part of a move to trim its budget by $1 billion over five years. Vanderbilt plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs by the end of the year to help shave operating costs 8% a year.

During the most recent battle over the budget, it seemed like the medical device industry may get some kind of relief from Obamacare through a repeal of the medical device tax, something both Democrats and Republicans support. But due to partisan bickering and Harry Reid's refusal to consider Obamacare could be killing jobs and entire industries, the tax still stands, companies keep cutting jobs and the medical device brain drain continues.

But not only does this tax increase costs on companies, it also increases costs on hospitals, doctors and people in need of medical treatment that requires medical devices to be used. As a consequence of this, biomedical or medical device engineering firms are already laying off workers who develop crucial medical products due to the "unforeseen" costs, or in other words, the costs of ObamaCare. Not to mention, the more money these companies pay to the government, the less money they have to invest in research and development.

With this new medical device tax, students who pay large sums of money to get degrees in the field of biomedical engineering, just like doctors, will no longer see the benefits of going into the field and therefore, we will have a shortage of engineers developing new medical device technology. The medical device tax is a death sentence for American medical innovation.

So, what does this all mean? Get ready for the inevitable and previously predicteddoctor shortage.

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