Now Nursing Homes Are Asking for Obamacare Waivers
Monday, May 16, 2011 - 8:50am
Since Obamacare was rammed through Congress, we have been discovering the potential unintended consequences of the Act. Waivers have been issued by the Obama Administration, for instance, to prevent the lapse of coverage for low income workers and college students.
But the Obama Administration does not have the power to correct all of the mistakes they so made so brazenly in the passage of the Act. According to the New York Times:
Since the law was signed 14 months ago, the focus of lobbying has shifted. A tumultuous battle over the future of the health care system has given way to more concentrated efforts to undo or rewrite particular provisions.
The New York Times reports that the latest example is the the nursing home industry which is lobbying Congress for relief from Obamacare's mandate that employees with at least 50 employees pay for health insurance of their employees.
Mark Parkinson, president of the American Health Care Association, the largest trade group for nursing homes, says the problem is that reimbursement rates for Medicaid and Medicare, set by government agencies, do not pay them enough to offer their employees medical coverage. “We do not have much ability to increase prices because we are so dependent on Medicaid and Medicare” for revenue, he said.