DEATH PANELS? STUDY SUGGESTS ONE OBAMACARE PROVISION KILLED PEOPLE

• Decreases in hospital readmissions among Medicare beneficiaries may have come at the cost of some patients’ lives, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Tuesday.
• The decreases originated with an Obamacare program that fined hospitals with too-high readmission rates.
• Many of these hospitals served lower-income Americans who were less likely to have access to quality, regular care and more likely to be readmitted within a month of being discharged.

An Affordable Care Act program that penalized hospitals for readmitting Medicare patients within a month of being discharged may have led to increased mortality rates among adults who experienced pneumonia and heart failure, according to a study published Tuesday.

The program was changed in September so that hospitals serving lower-income, older adults were not hit as hard by the penalties, but the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that damage may have already been done, and not just to hospitals’ bottom lines.