Opinion: Doctors and hospitals posing as charity cases? It's nauseating

Obamacare was intended, in part, to rein in sky-high healthcare costs. Yet some doctors and hospitals are responding to the reform law with outstretched palms and brother-can-you-spare-a-dime pleas for more money from patients. Evelyn Stern, 75, of Brentwood has been treated at UCLA Medical Center for the last few years and always has appreciated the hospital's gleaming facility and state-of-the-art resources. "They don't seem to be hurting for money," she told me. So Stern was more than a little surprised to receive a recent solicitation for voluntary donations from the hospital's Division of Geriatrics.