Safety-Net Hospitals Profit Under Obamacare

Guess what? Those safety-net hospitals in states that did not expand Medicaid, which were pleading that they would go bust unless that welfare program grew, are doing just fine:

Hospitals that treat many poor and uninsured patients were expected to face tough financial times in states that did not expand Medicaid under the federal law known as Obamacare.

That’s because they would get less Medicare and Medicaid funding under the Affordable Care Act, while still having to provide high levels of charity care.

But in some of the largest states that did not expand Medicaid, many safety-net hospitals fared pretty well last year — even better than in 2013 in many cases, according to their financial documents. KHN looked at the performance of about a dozen such hospitals in Florida, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia and Kansas, which released their 2014 financial results. (Phil Galewitz, MedCityNews)

The article is titled “Shocked?”, but readers of this blog are not shocked. We have frequently discussed how hospitals win under Obamacare.

In the states which did not expand Medicaid, subsidized Obamacare policies lead to less uncompensated care at the safety-net hospitals. In other words, the cost of providing charity care was transferred from local and state taxpayers to federal taxpayers.

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