Tag Archives: uncompensated care

Increasing Medicaid Dependency Does Not Reduce “Uncompensated” Care

iStock_000007047153XSmallRobert Laszewski is a leading health insurance expert whom I often cite favorably. However, in a recent article praising Ohio governor John Kasich he has made an unforced error. Governor Kasich is one of only three Republican governors who took federal Obamacare money to expand Medicaid dependency. According to Mr. Laszewski:

On Medicaid, the Kasich administration helped 650,000 people whose uncovered health-care costs were being shifted onto and burdening employers and individuals struggling to pay their already-high health insurance costs. The administration enrolled them into a new Ohio Medicaid system that made 38 different reforms over five years. In 2015 alone, it saved Ohio taxpayers $1.9 billion compared with the original state-budget target. It held the program’s per capita cost growth below 3 percent while cutting the state’s uninsured rate in half.

The idea that people who cannot pay their hospitals bills are the major problem in driving American health costs is evidence-free. According to a September 2014 report promoting Obamacare’s benefits, Obamacare’s reduced so-called “uncompensated care” by $5.7 billion in 2014. Health spending in 2014 was $3 trillion, so $5.7 billion is less than one fifth of one percent of national health spending! Continue reading Increasing Medicaid Dependency Does Not Reduce “Uncompensated” Care

Hospitals’ Uninsured Patients Rising Again

Remember how Obamacare was supposed to reduce the burden of so-called “uncompensated care” from uninsured patients that was driving hospitals bankrupt? Well, two years into Obamacare it hasn’t worked out that way:

Hospital operator HCA Holdings Inc on Tuesday said more patients are coming through its doors who have lost their health insurance, most likely because they stopped paying for it.

The largest U.S. for-profit hospital chain said it admitted more uninsured patients in the third quarter who had previously registered with health insurance, compared with a year ago. They included people who bought coverage from marketplaces set up under President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, but then dropped it.

“We believe this is likely due to non-payment of premiums,” HCA Chief Financial Officer Bill Rutherford said on the company’s earnings call.

Overall, the company admitted 13.6 percent more uninsured patients in the third quarter. It was the second straight quarterly increase in uninsured admissions, reversing a downward trend since the insurance exchanges opened for business in early 2014

(Susan Kelly, “HCA says some patients dropping their new insurance coverage,” Reuters. October 27, 2015.)

Protecting hospitals’ revenues by increasing the number of insured Americans was never actually a legitimately important goal of health reform, although hospitals are very successful at making that case. Now, it looks like Obamacare doesn’t even do that.

Government Spending on Uncompensated Care is Less Than One Half of One Percent of Government Health Spending

One of the reasons given for universal health insurance coverage is that uninsured people receive medical care but do not pay their bills. It’s true: A new analysis published by the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that providers delivered $84.9 billion worth of medical care to uninsured people, for which they were not directly paid. However, federal, state, and local governments compensated providers $35.9 billion, leaving $49.0 billion truly uncompensated.

health-care-costsIs that a lot? Well, all levels of government spent $1.3 trillion on health care that year. So, government funding of uncompensated care is 0.4 percent of all government health care spending. If government stepped up and compensated the remaining $49.0 billion, the total payout would amount to about one percent of all government health spending.

Is this really something we should be turning ourselves inside out over? Especially given the evidence that Medicaid does not give timely access to care, and the emerging signals that ObamaCare reduces timely access to care, it is far from clear that adding ObamaCare’s insurance bureaucracy on top of this situation is going to be worth the trouble, even for the beneficiaries.

Continue reading Government Spending on Uncompensated Care is Less Than One Half of One Percent of Government Health Spending