Obamacare HOSPITAL SHOCK-America's Top Hospitals Not Included in Insurance Plans

On the bright side, I don't believe that President Obama ever said if you like your hospital you can keep it so it isn't another Presidential lie, but the fact that many of America's top hospitals are not included in Obamacare health insurance plans is just one more reason to oppose the President's signature legislation.

According to the Financial Times

The majority of insurance plans being sold on the new healthcare exchanges in New York, Texas, and California, for example, will not offer patients’ access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centres, or Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, one of the top research and teaching hospitals in the country.

Experts say the move by insurers to limit consumers’ choices and steer them away from hospitals that are considered too expensive, or even “inefficient”, reflects the new competitive landscape in the insurance industry since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law.

But these hospitals are not expensive because they are inefficient, they are expensive because they have the best staffs and the most advanced medical equipment.

We’re very concerned. [Insurers] know patients that are sick come to places like ours. What this is trying to do is redirect those patients elsewhere, but there is a reason why they come here. These patients need what it is that we are capable of providing,” says Thomas Priselac, president and chief executive officer of Cedars-Sinai Health System in California.

While the Mayo Clinic is in some plans it is not "in-network" for most:

While the Mayo Clinic will now be available on seven different plans offered by two different insurance carriers in Rochester, Ms Harrington says the long-term concern for the hospital is that intense focus on bringing down costs will hurt “centres of excellence” like Mayo that attract the most complicated medical cases in the country.

“I don’t think there is any doubt that a significant portion of the Mayo base are very sick patients. You don’t come here for primary care. We do treat the sickest of the sick. We do experimental treatment. This is where you come for innovative treatments for life threatening illnesses,” she says.

This point to a problem with Obamacare and most progressive distribution plans. The ultimate goal is not to raise the care of the "have nots" but to create one very mediocre middle.  With the elimination of some of the nations top hospitals from the Obamacare health insurance plans almost everybody's healthcare will be worse and only the rich will be able to use the very best.