In Case You Missed It — Healthcare Daily Digest for Monday, January 28

There’s a question of cause-and-effect in this headline from the Huffington Post: “Aurora Health Care Says It Will Lay Off Employees Because Of Obamacare.”

Once one gets past the irony of a healthcare organization alleging that it is being negatively effected by affordable healthcare, there’s also the question of: Really? Is it really the Affordable Care Act that’s to blame, or are there managerial issues that are easily covered under the scapegoat of Obamacare?

(I ask because of this sentence from the article: “Already, staff has been instructed to cut costs by avoiding making color copies.”)

It’s also useful to keep this possibility in mind — that it may not entirely be the fault of Obamacare — when reading other headlines, like this one from WDRB.com in Indianapolis: Companies weigh options under health care changes. And to be clear: I’m not suggesting that implementing healthcare for your small business is an easy-peasy cheap thing to do. But I do think it’s easy to suffle blame on a controversial topic. As the WDRB article points out, “The Indianapolis Business Journal reports the change is forcing some employers to consider cutting workers’ hours to avoid paying the increased costs.”

Here are some other headlines I found just for you for Monday:

• Here’s a Fun Chart: Curious about what you could now be paying for HIPAA violations? SmartDataCollection.com has you covered.

• While Some Small Companies Are Cutting Hours…: Health care among early leaders in the S&P 500. See: there is money to be made in healthcare reform!

• For Instance, Cheating Diners in San Francisco!: “City Attorney Dennis Herrera on Friday said that ‘dozens’ of local restaurants received warning letters which informed them that they collected more money from their customers than they have spent on employee healthcare.”

• You Can Always Trust a Guy with a Receding Hairline and Glasses: [Editor’s Note: Mike Bevel has both.] You can check in with Paul Holmes on what he sees on the horizon for 2013. He covers five topics: Dealing with the fallout from Obamacar; a focus on wellness and prevention; the “patent cliff” and the need for innovation; new technology and digitization; the impact of big data.