Obamacare: Some hospitals could be punished for treating uninsured poor people for free
In addition to punishing people who might not be able to afford healthcare coverage under Obamacare a new rule has been written which could be used to punish some hospitals which provide free services to the people who do not have healthcare insurance. (Don’t you love how new rules are still being written, proving once and for all that all those who voted for this law had no idea what the final version of the law would be at the time they voted for it?)
Charitable hospitals that treat uninsured Americans will be subjected to new levels of scrutiny of their nonprofit status and could face sizable new fines under Obamacare.
A new provision in Section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code, which takes effect under Obamacare, sets new standards of review and installs new financial penalties for tax-exempt charitable hospitals, which devote a minimum amount of their expenses to treat uninsured poor people. Approximately 60 percent of American hospitals are currently nonprofit.
“It requires tax-exempt hospitals to do a community needs survey and file additional paperwork with the IRS every three years. This is to prove that the charitable hospital is still needed in their geographical area — ‘needed’ as defined by Obamacare and overseen by IRS bureaucrats,” said John Kartch, spokesman for Americans for Tax Reform.
“Failure to comply, or to prove this continuing need, could result in the loss of the hospital’s tax-exempt status. The hospital would then become a for-profit venture, paying income tax — hence the positive revenue score” for the federal government, Kartch said. “Obamacare advocates turned over every rock to find as much tax money as possible.”
There’s that pesky IRS again! If you are a non-profit hospital providing free healthcare benefits to the poor you will face additional scrutiny (ask the conservative organizations what that means) and if it is determined that you do too much for the poor you can rest assured that the IRS will determine you are not needed in that community and will start taxing you.
In addition to punishing hospitals which are trying to help the same poor people the Democrats claim to care about so deeply this is also a double whammy on the poor: Not only will these people be facing a tax penalty for not buying a product they cannot afford, they will also no longer have access to the free services these hospitals were providing because when push comes to shove and the Obamacare Gestapo (the IRS) puts its boots on the necks of these hospitals they will drop the services.
So why would the Federal Government have a problem with hospitals providing free services to the poor? The answer may not be evident at first glance but it does make perfect sense from a government standpoint when you read the answer:
Charity for the uninsured is one of the factors that could discourage enrollment in Obamacare, which requires all Americans to purchase health insurance or else face new taxes themselves from the IRS.
As we all know, Obamacare has nothing to do with making healthcare affordable to all Americans and it has nothing to do with helping the poor. Obamacare has one goal and one goal only: To make more people dependent on the government, and hospitals which provide free services to the poor are encroaching on an area in which the government wants to reign supreme.
The government does not want to help us, it only wants to control us and the best way for them to do that is to punish those who really are trying to help us. Obamacare is not healthcare legislation it is taxation legislation which is why the IRS was chosen to goose step all over the American people and those who stand in their way.
America's Watchtower 
Will Americans take this laying gown, too? When will they ENOUGH ALREADY!
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Sadly I do not think Americans are paying attention right now with it being the Summertime. And I am afraid that those who are paying attention have already thrown in the towel on this issue.
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As you probably know healthcare is my balliwick. I am just starting to look at this, but as I read this, they are trying to mislead us with the word charitable. The majority of hospitals are non profit. Thus this would apply to the majority unless this charitable word defines it otherwise. Google the 50 largest non profit hospitals and you can see what the intent is. This would totally destroy our hospitals.
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The hospitals would also be subject to real estate taxes.
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Would this also include Catholic Hospitals, Bunker?
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The article I used for this post states that 60% of the hospitals are non-profit, but my gut tells me it is much higher than that. There is no doubt in my mind that this is an attempt to bully the hospitals into compliance with the Obama regime’s policies.
There is a growing number of doctors who are beginning to operate on a cash only basis and it is only a matter of time before a rule change is handed down mandating that all doctors accept insurance or face the consequences.
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This is OB’s war on religion. The USCCB won’t get it through their thick skulls that you can’t break bread with the devil. Their idiotic belief that social justice must come from the government will lead to the destruction of the church. Conservative members are fed up with this message. For over 200 years charity came from donations from hard working people and not as a hand out from the government. Any Christian needs to stop voting Dem.
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The government sees any private organization donating or helping the poor to be competition and they are trying to make it so hard for private people to be charitable so they can corner the market. This will make the government the only viable option for the poor and this will help them to achieve their goal of making as many people as possible dependent on the government for survival.
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Unemployed, looking for work folks usually do not have money to pay for insurance..But Buck Ofama has so screwed things up with his lack of anything remotely resembling leadership…Damn…
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He ends up hurting the people he claims he wants to help and I cannot help but think this was his intention all along.
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The open-ended nature of this law, allowing the law to be written and rewritten as it is implemented, is the main reason why it should have been stopped and never allowed close to Obama’s pen. I have lost count of the stories we have documented just like this. New rules being written to change the law to benefit the government and hurt the American people. This is a dangerous bill, indeed.
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Larry, I believe there were “blank” pages in the Affordable Care Act, to be filled in “later”…why didn’t that send up a red flag to our Senators and Representatives right there? Oh, I forgot, they did not READ it!
As to it being in place for our healthcare, I believe it is there to not treat a lot of us, in other words to deny treatment. Am I on the wrong track here? By keeping a short leash on the doctors, they will be able to make sure they do not treat people that the Administration doesn’t want treated. I hate that it has come to this, but how is lack of treatment for the good of the people and why would anyone believe this?
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Larry and Lou, you are both spot on. Obamacare was passed knowing the regulations for the bill would be written in the future by HHS. That means even if the bothered to read the bill they still wouldn’t have known what was in it when all was said and done. How anyone could vote for this is beyond me!
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Good article on Obamacare, if you care to read it:http://floppingaces.net/2013/08/10/reid-admits-it-single-payer-was-their-intention-all-along/
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I did not read this particular article but I have seen where Reid admitted this was the first step towards single payer. And that was the goal of this legislation all along.
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I have the Red Eye Radio program on all night, I do not “sleep” like most people, I guess. They were talking about the hospitals and what Obamacare means for them. If they are ones that do “charity”, they have their Non-profit status. Obamacare and Obama will force them to stop doing their charity work, thus becoming a different status, and will be taxed. What a win-win for the Administration, huh? Force people to get insurance and force hospitals to not treat anyone without insurance AND get taxes from the hospitals on top of it. What a great country we live in, in present day! I am beginning to think the 40’s-50’s and 60’s were the best of the best.
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The next target is going to be the doctors who are already starting to institute cash only policies and are refusing to accept healthcare altogether. This provides people who can afford to pay the doctor bills and the mandate fine an option and I am sure it is being frowned upon by the regime.
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That is a noble cause, but I see one big problem coming from that…IF they can get away with it, what about medicine? I can see this Administration stopping Big Pharma from filling scripts for anyone that did not see a doctor in the Obamacare group. Without meds, a lot of people will not live. So, they can control it all thru stopping the medicine from being filled.
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Now that the hand of the government is in our healthcare I do not think anything will be off-limits. It may be gradual but eventually the whole industry will be controlled by the government.
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