Early Thursday morning, President Obama signed a law that ended the 16-day government shutdown and temporarily raised the country's debt ceiling — but what are the effects of the shutdown, especially for the healthcare sector?
In the signed legislation, no significant changes were made to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. There will be no delay in the individual mandate, no repeal of the medical device tax and no ill effects toward the health insurance exchanges, which started Oct. 1 and continued running despite the shutdown. The government agencies that have been shuttered for the past two-plus weeks, like the National Institutes of Health and the federal health IT office, are slowly getting back to speed, according to a New York Times report.
For hospitals, health systems and other providers, there were no changes toward Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, which were considered essential services within HHS and CMS to continue. However, some closed government services directly affected hospitals and health systems and their short-term operations.
For example, CMS was not able to allocate funds or resources for hospital and nursing home inspections and facility certification and recertification surveys. In Illinois, this forced the state Department of Public Health to hold off on several inspections.
Smaller hospitals that rely on loans and financial services through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — such as the Section 242 Hospital Mortgage Insurance Program — have seen hang-ups as well. Pinckneyville (Ill.) Community Hospital CEO Tom Hudgins told WSIL that the shutdown led to a delay in the USDA issuing a $30 million loan. This has pushed back the completion date of his hospital's renovation project by several months.
Some patients already admitted in hospitals saw the ramifications firsthand. A patient at Stanford Hospital & Clinics in Palo Alto, Calif., is waiting for an artificial heart surgery as a device awaits approval from the Food and Drug Administration, according to a Silicon Valley Business Journal report.
Furthermore, hospital executives hoping to see a recovering economy, and more stabilizing finances, got bad news from Standard & Poor's Ratings Services. S&P said the government shutdown took $24 billion out of the economy, which equates to a 0.6 percent loss of fourth-quarter GDP growth.
"In the summer of 2011, as we approached the last debt ceiling standoff, consumer confidence plummeted and hit a 31-year low in August when the debt ceiling issue came to a head," the S&P release stated. "Given that this round of debt ceiling negotiations is occurring after two-plus weeks of a government shutdown, the total impact on the economy will likely be even more severe."
More Articles on Healthcare and the Government Shutdown:
Government Shutdown Ends, Deal Doesn't Alter PPACA
Politics: Now Threatening the State of Our Union
Government Shutdown Forces MedPAC to Cancel October Meeting