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Hospitals Pleased with Obamacare Ruling
Local hospital officials are, for the most part, happy with the Supreme Court's major ruling of Thursday.

Heads of both OSF Saint Mary Medical Center and Galesburg Cottage Hospital are happy with the high court's decision to leave the vast majority of the Affordable Care Act -- a.k.a. "Obamacare" -- in law.

Cottage CEO Earl Tamar tells WGIL one problems all hospitals have had to deal with over the years should at least lessen soon.

"That expanding coverage will also reduce the strain among uncompensated care on hospitals," Tamar said. "You know for us, uncompensated care has risen considerably over the last two, three years."

That's cases where people use the Emergency Room as their primary provider versus a typical doctor's office.

Saint Mary CEO Richard Kowalski tells WGIL whether the law was altered or not, parent OSF Health Care was working to make many of the changes anyway.

"(We) recognize the need for the transformation," he said. "And (we) have taken a number of steps, ourselves already, to posture ourselves for the future for where we think health care will need to go."

Kowalski says that's being done through becoming what's called an accountable care organization -- helping patients with chronic illness even after their hospital stay is over, and through improving electronic medical records.

Both CEO's agree that major changes are needed to the nation's health care system, and Kowalski says maybe there's more that can be done after that.
06 29 12 by Newsroom
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