ObamaCare Shutting Down Private Free Health Clinics

by JASmius



aka What happens when charity is nationalized - or, "Nothing is more expensive than when it becomes 'free'":

The [Una]ffordable Care[-Less] Act is spelling the demise of free healthcare clinics across the country, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Take a moment to ponder the semantical incomprehensibility of that sentence.  No, seriously, I need you all to do it for me, because it's making my ears start to bleed again.

Of clinics across twenty-eight states, almost a dozen in the past two years have cited ObamaCare as their reason for shutting their doors.

Both the Good Samaritan Free Clinic in Rock Island, Illinois, and the Ninth Street Ministries Free Medical Clinic in Polk County, Arkansas, shut their doors this year saying their missions were complete. Now that most of their former clients have medical insurance, many through expanded Medicaid, they are no longer needed, they say.

IOW, the Regime is eliminating its private sector competition and building its public healthcare monopoly.  How?  By destroying the kindness, compassion, and generosity of the American people by convincing them that they don't need to render aid and assistance to those in need because "the government will handle it":

But other clinics aren't closing for lack of need. They simply can't find enough donors since many who had been opening their wallets are now under the impression that universal coverage exists.

As soon as there was the perception of universal healthcare, the likelihood of receiving donations goes down," Colin McRae, a board member for Savannah Georgia's Community Health Mission, which closed October 30th. The clinic still had people on a waiting list to be treated when it shut down. [emphasis added]

How....convenient.  Or inconvenient, depending on your income/wealth level and whether you have access to healthcare.  The perception cultivated by The One is that he has given us "universal" healthcare, but quite obviously this is not true.  Just ask the people losing access to private free clinics who don't qualify for or can't get Medicaid:

Patients in states that didn't expand Medicaid, though, still need their free or low-cost healthcare, and are finding it increasingly hard to find.

And some who are not covered by Medicaid aren't happy. Sixty-year-old Ella Relford told the Journal she would have preferred to continue seeing her doctor at the Western Stark Free Clinic in Massillon, Ohio.

So not only has ObamaCare taken away the healthcare, and the liked plans and doctors, of millions of Americans, throwing them into either exorbitantly more expensive plans with all manner of services they don't need or want, with tens of millions more to come as the delayed Employer and Individual Mandates loom on the horizon, but it has also taken away the healthcare and doctors of impoverished Americans that the private sector was charitably providing.  And the coverage is less "universal" than it was before this monstrosity was shoved down all our throats.

But at least it's free, aside from the $200 billion a year price tag.

Exit question: Is government-induced ear-bleeding included on any Regime-sanctioned ObamaCare plan?  I'm guessing not.