Iowa Hospital Laying Off 29 People, Cutting Hours Because of . . . Obamacare

Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, Iowa, has no other choice but to lay off 29 people in an effort to slash $38 million because of Obamacare’s costly provisions, along with low payments from Medicare and Medicaid.

WHO-IA reports the hospital is modifying director pay, reducing hours for certain jobs, and isn’t hiring to fill new positions in order to save more money.

Bob Ritz, president of Mercy Medical Center said, “As the federal government and state payment systems continue to ratchet down on what they pay us and our costs go up, we have to look for opportunities to create cost efficiencies,” Ritz said. “And one way you do that is you reduce your management costs. So if we have a department that has a director and a manager and two supervisors for let’s say 75 staff, we may remove one of those positions to what we say are the layers of management.”

This train wreck just keeps getting worse and worse.