{"id":838,"date":"2011-08-18T12:52:27","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T16:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=838"},"modified":"2011-08-18T14:36:53","modified_gmt":"2011-08-18T18:36:53","slug":"health-care-job-boom-could-soon-slow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/08\/18\/health-care-job-boom-could-soon-slow\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Care Job Boom Could Soon Slow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week, <em>New York Times<\/em> reporters Reed Abelson and Katie Thomas<a title=\"Cuts in Health Care May Undermine Role in Labor Market\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/08\/18\/business\/cuts-in-health-care-may-undermine-role-in-labor-market.html?pagewanted=1&amp;_r=1&amp;ref=todayspaper\" target=\"_blank\"> took on a sticky issue<\/a>&#8211;as the federal and state governments cut into health care funding their budgets can&#8217;t support, can the health care industry continue to generate much-needed jobs?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The answer, it seems, is no.<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The situation has led many in the health industry to caution that it cannot be relied upon to keep<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_839\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"As health care funding faces more cuts, providers fear they'll no longer be able to support job growth.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/08\/PainFree_006-2.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-839\" title=\"PainFree_006 (2)\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/08\/PainFree_006-2-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/08\/PainFree_006-2-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/08\/PainFree_006-2-620x414.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/08\/PainFree_006-2-220x147.jpg 220w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">As health care funding faces more cuts, providers fear they&#39;ll no longer be able to support job growth.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u00a0hiring workers. &#8216;It\u2019s not realistic to believe that we\u2019re going to continue to generate job growth when you\u2019re speaking about Medicare and Medicaid reductions in the hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few years,&#8217; said Daniel Sisto, president of the Healthcare Association of New York, which represents the state\u2019s hospitals and health systems.<\/p>\n<p>Companies that rely on government spending have been bracing for deeper reductions, and President Obama recently alluded to another round of belt-tightening from one of the industry\u2019s bedrock payers \u2014 Medicare.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The article notes health care fields added 31,000 jobs in July (out of 117,000 across all industries), which is actually up by a few thousand from average.\u00a0 Apparently help wanted ads from providers are down, as is new facility construction.\u00a0 An atmosphere of economic uncertainty, coupled with confusion over contradictions in lower-court rulings on the federal health care overhaul have many providers sitting tight.\u00a0 Then, there are\u00a0these numbers to consider:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Hospitals experienced reductions in Medicaid reimbursement in 37 states for next year\u2019s budgets, according to Lisa Goldstein, an analyst at Moody\u2019s, who predicts further cuts.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And the New Hampshire Medicaid kerfluffle also gets a mention,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;At the Elliot Health System in Manchester, N.H., the seemingly abrupt decision by state lawmakers to sharply reduce hospital reimbursements led the hospital to recently lay off 182 people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the last 10 years, we\u2019ve been pretty stable and we\u2019ve been able to grow,\u201d said Elliot\u2019s chief executive, Doug Dean. But faced with the loss of millions of dollars in Medicaid revenue that would wreak havoc on the coming hospital budget, Mr. Dean said he had no choice but to cut jobs. \u201cIt was simply because of the economics of Medicaid,\u201d he said. Elliot is among a group of hospitals filing a lawsuit to stop the cuts.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>According to numbers from the <a title=\"New Hampshire: Selected Economic Characteristics, 2005-2009\" href=\"http:\/\/factfinder.census.gov\/servlet\/ADPTable?_bm=y&amp;-geo_id=04000US33&amp;-qr_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_DP5YR3&amp;-ds_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_&amp;-_lang=en&amp;-_sse=on\" target=\"_blank\">US Census<\/a>, in 2009, 22.4 percent of New Hampshire residents were employed in the Educational Services, Health Care and Social Assistance arena.\u00a0 You can read more about New Hampshire&#8217;s hospital controversy <a title=\"Why Hospitals Are Angry Enough About New Medicaid Legislation To Sue\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/08\/16\/why-hospitals-are-angry-enough-about-new-medicaid-legislation-to-sue\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>, and <a title=\"NH\u2019s Largest Health Care Provider Pushing Early Retirement Following Funding Cut\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/08\/10\/nhs-largest-health-care-provider-pushing-early-retirement-following-funding-cut\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, New York Times reporters Reed Abelson and Katie Thomas took on a sticky issue&#8211;as the federal and state governments cut into health care funding their budgets can&#8217;t support, can the health care industry continue to generate much-needed jobs?\u00a0 The answer, it seems, is no.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[28,529,134,494],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":841,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions\/841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}