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Dallas Hospital Files for Bankruptcy Three Years after Opening

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Walnut Hill Medical Center, a 100-bed for-profit hospital in Dallas, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Tuesday after abruptly closing just four days prior, Becker’s Hospital Review reported yesterday. The hospital, which opened in April 2014, shut down June 2 without warning from hospital officials. Employees were told of the plan to shutter the hospital on the morning it closed. Although officials did not provide specifics about what caused Walnut Hill Medical Center to close, documents filed in the bankruptcy case give a glimpse into the financial challenges the hospital is facing. In its bankruptcy petition, the hospital listed its assets as between $10 million and $50 million and its liabilities as between $100 million and $500 million. The hospital said it has at least 200 creditors. Read more.

For more on hospital and health care insolvencies, be sure to pick up a copy of the ABI Health Care Insolvency Manual, Third Edition from the ABI Store. 

Turnaround Executive Lynn Tilton to Testify About Failed Ambulance Company

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As her collection of troubled companies continues to struggle, distressed investing executive Lynn Tilton will face questioning under oath about the demise of one of them, failed emergency-care transport company Transcare Corp., the Wall Street Journal reported today. Over the past year, Tilton has gone to trial in New York and Delaware over her handling of what was once a $2.5 billion empire, spending days on the witness stand. Sometime this summer, Tilton will take questions about the fate of Transcare, which shut down suddenly last year, leaving more than 1,200 workers jobless, and many allegedly unpaid. The questions will come from bankruptcy trustees, who have been issuing subpoenas and getting court orders to fill in the gaps in the ambulance company’s financial records. More than a year after Transcare closed down, bank and tax records were missing, court documents say.

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Religious Hospitals in Pension Dispute

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Religious hospitals don't have to comply with federal laws protecting pension plans, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a case that affects retirement benefits for roughly a million workers nationwide, the Associated Press reported. The justices sided with three church-affiliated nonprofit hospital systems being sued for underfunding their employee pension plans. The hospitals — two with Catholic affiliation and one with Lutheran ties — had argued that their pensions are "church plans" that are exempt from the law and have been treated as such for decades by federal officials. Workers asserted that Congress never meant to exempt massive hospital systems that employ tens of thousands of workers. They said the hospitals are dodging legal safeguards that could jeopardize their benefits. Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said that a pension plan operated by a religiously affiliated hospital is exempt from the law "regardless of who established it."

Obamacare Taxes Aren't Necessarily Going Away: GOP Senators

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Republican senators said it’s unclear whether their chamber will repeal all of the taxes imposed under Obamacare as they set aside the health care bill passed by the House and prepare to write their own from scratch, Bloomberg reported yesterday. “That’s hard to say right now. We just have to see,” said Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), whose panel oversees health care and tax policy. “It’s going to be negotiated.” The uncertainty comes despite what Hatch said on the floor of the Senate in February, when he called repealing the Obamacare taxes essential, labeling them “harmful to the economy.” Hatch and other GOP senators are signaling they’re going to move slowly as they consider the case for and against repealing the health-care taxes. Some of the Republican senators say they’re wary of the loss of revenue that would result if the Obamacare taxes were eliminated, and how that could jeopardize the prospects of helping the uninsured obtain coverage. The House narrowly passed legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act, eliminating taxes that affect insurers, medical device makers and individuals earning more than $200,000 a year who face a 3.8 percent tax on investment income. There’s also a 0.9 percent Medicare surcharge for top earners. The Congressional Budget Office estimated on March 23 that the revenue lost from repealing the taxes would total $999 billion over a decade. Senators who are working on crafting a health care bill met Tuesday to discuss the way forward.
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Republican Obamacare Replacement Bill Passes House

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After years of debate, the House voted to repeal key parts of the Affordable Care Act and replace them with new provisions, CNBC reported yesterday. The vote sends the Republican-sponsored bill to gut Obamacare to the Senate for consideration. But winning approval for the bill could be even more difficult in the Senate than it has been in the House, where Republican leaders struggled for nearly two months to wrangle enough votes in their caucus to secure its passage. The bill passed by a vote of 217-213. The bill — which would dramatically change the way the federal government funds purchases of individual health plans and Medicaid — is expected to dramatically increase the number of people without health insurance if enacted into law.
 
For a list of the Obamacare provisions to be repealed, click here.

 

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