Tips on reading the news: don't confuse "Quality", when they really mean cost containment

This article by Bruce Gans highlights yet another Obamacare casualty- acute inpatient rehabilitation.

Acute rehab hospitals are the facilities where people recover from severe injuries like spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injuries.  Bruce Gans is part of the leadership for the Kessler Institute of Rehabilitation, which is where I trained for residency.  It is most famous for being where Christopher Reeves recovered from his spinal cord injury, and is generally considered one of the premier rehabilitation facilities in the world, #2 in the current US News rankings.  It's a great facility, and where I'd want my parents treated if something horrible happened to them.

..... and Obamacare is cutting access to facilities like Kessler, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and other world class facilities.  As Dr. Gans notes, the ACA treats nursing homes as equivalent to world class rehab facilities, despite evidence that they are not equivalent.

It's part of a broader trend in what I call an abuse of research.  In an ideal world, research is used to help people.  However, the ACA is primarily focused on cost containment, so it looks at research studies and tries to find cheaper alternatives to the standard of care, and find studies selectively that support the use of cheaper alternatives as equivalent treatments.

That's simply not right, and does not serve the needs of patients.