The Cleveland Clinic released the following statement:
“To prepare for healthcare reform, Cleveland Clinic is transforming the way care is delivered to patients. Over the past several years, we have had an ongoing focus on driving efficiencies, lowering costs, reducing duplication in services and enhancing quality to make healthcare affordable to patients.
Although we have made progress, we need to further reduce costs to the organization by $330 million in 2014. We are carefully evaluating all aspects of our system to accomplish this. Some of the initiatives include offering early retirement to 3,000 eligible employees, reducing operational costs, stricter review of filling vacant positions, and lastly workforce reductions.
Through these changing times, we are focused on providing the highest quality of care to our patients in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.”
“To prepare for healthcare reform, Cleveland Clinic is transforming the way care is delivered to patients. ….. Although we have made progress, we need to further reduce costs to the organization by $330 million in 2014. We are carefully evaluating all aspects of our system to accomplish this. Some of the initiatives include offering early retirement to 3,000 eligible employees, reducing operational costs, stricter review of filling vacant positions, and lastly workforce reductions.
but...but......but Obama says...At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Aug. 11, 2009, Obama said, "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan."In a speech to a joint session of Congress in September 2009, Obama said, "If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have."
The claim Obama made after the Supreme Court decision on June 28, 2012, was a broader statement, and as a result, it’s less accurate. First, a March 2012 study by the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan number-crunching arm of Congress, projected that 3 million to 5 million fewer non-elderly people would obtain coverage through their employer each year from 2019 through 2022 than would have been the case before the law was passed. Including those with individually purchased policies enlarges that decline by an additional 1 million to 3 million Americans.