St. Francis CEO responds to Health care act ruling
Posted:
Updated:
June 28, 2012 01:38 PM
By Victoria Shirley
MONROE, La. (KNOE 8 News)- In a significant victory for the Obama administration, the Supreme Court upheld a critical part of the President's health care reform.
A KNOE 8 News crew went to St. Francis hospital in downtown Monroe to find out what this ruling means for us locally.
The highest court upheld the key feature of President Obama's health care overhaul, the individual mandate, which will require nearly all Americans to buy health insurance. The Supreme Court says congress did have the power to put forth an individual mandate because it has the power to tax.
The ruling also lets stand the part of the law that allows children to stay on their parents' insurance policies until they're 26. But the court struck down the law's Medicaid expansion, that would have required states to offer more coverage to the poor. St. Francis CEO Louis Bremer says the ruling gives the hospital a clearer direction. "Regardless of what the outcome was today, whether you liked it or disliked it, for us at St. Francis Medical Center, what it means is we can move forward now with doing the job we're really all about, taking care of patients." said Bremer.
He says St. Francis has been planning for the law by making changes, but it's always been unclear what the final law would look like. Obviously a lot of that has been in limbo for the past year or so, while this matter has been resolved by the courts, so now that it's resolved we will be able to focus a whole lot more clearly on what we need to do to be in compliance with the law." Bremer said.
Both Governor Jindal and Louisiana Senator Vitter have spoken out against the ruling. But only time will tell if President Obama's health care overhaul will work as advertised.
"We're going to continue to do what we've done for a hundred years now. Now that we've got a little clearer direction now on that we'll work very hard to do it even better than we've done in the past." said Bremer.
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