Ok, the reason it's not TRAGIC that 15% of hospitals could close might be hard to imagine, but not hard to explain. There is a lot of money in the bill/law to make MORE community medical clinics. This is for all the 34 million people more who will now be able to go for regular checkups and visit WITH insurance cards INSTEAD of needing to go to.... hospital emergency rooms.
Thats why it can be MADE to look like a horrfying number, but generally the people playing it that way dont bother to explain anything further.
The economy grew by another 3.2% according to the report out today. Every news network should be at least running that headline in their wire scroll-crawl thingy. If not, google search for 3.2% economy, or here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/bu...on.html?src=mv
Or here's a snippet to illustrate:
"The broadest measure of the overall economy grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2010, after gains of 5.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2.2 percent in the third quarter."