My mistake, he didn’t. Here’s a good place to start.
(I do not include a liberal cootie warning for tighty rightys because TPM is pretty reliable, in all the years I’ve been checking on them, they’ve not burned me yet.)
Wait just a cotton pickin’ minute there. We came into this thread argue about the OP, which was Obama’s statement about one aspect of the law. That doesn’t mean we’re all-knowing about the entire law.
And you didn’t answer the question. At all. So I must conclude that you don’t know the answer, either. Unless you’d care to try again…?
Of course we were lied to about Obamacare! Remember “Death Panels”? I don’t blame Mr. Obama one bit for making a slightly-too-rosy statement about keeping your insurance. The slightest qualification would have been pounced on and lie-fully amplified by the opposite side.
Here’s a data point about bad insurance… My daughter is currently filing for bankruptcy because of a medical treatment that she was told was covered by her insurance. Only after the fact did she learn that she’d exceeded the annual maximum coverage, and they sent her a bill for $80,000.
The tu quoque is strong in that one!
OK, I spent a little time on The Google to find out about this aspirin issue. Every source I encountered said something like this:
Well, it’s a good thing Obamacare doesn’t expand the ranks for medicare. Oops…
Maybe I encountered only biased sources, and if so, I’m open to being corrected.
That’s horribly misleading. No hospital loses money by participating in Medicare and Medicaid. They participate because they make money by doing so. Hospitals are free to refuse Medicaid/Medicare patients, but in general the only ones that do are the Shriners Hospitals (funded by an endowment, don’t charge for care anyway) and the VA hospitals.
The report concludes that the overall Medicare margin for hospitals declined from **–4.5 percent **in 2010 to –5.8 percent in 2011. Furthermore, MedPAC projects the overall Medicare margin in 2013 will be –6 percent.
The report also notes that although Medicare payments are currently less than costs for the average hospital, it is possible for some hospitals to make money on Medicare: The median efficient hospital generated a positive 2 percent Medicare margin in 2011.
I am not sure what an “efficient hospital” is vs. a non-efficient one, so I have no idea what that last paragraph means. But apparently, overall, hospitals lose quite significantly on Medicare patients.
Ah there it is. 2/3 of the hospitals lose money on Medicare patients: MedPAC: 64% of Hospitals Lose Money on Medicare Patients
And Medicaid reimbursement rates are lower than Medicare’s.
And yet they participate.
Yes. But your statement “No hospital loses money by participating in Medicare and Medicaid.” is demonstrably wrong. 64% of hospitals do lose money participating in Medicare and Medicaid.
From that cite:
Well, yes they do. And the reason (I’m speculating here, so correct me if I’m wrong) is that they don’t want to be cut out of a huge segment of the market. So, in order to capture some of that market, they charge higher prices for non-medicare/medicaid patients.
Now, whether they are actually “losing money” may or may not be true, depending on how you look at it. But it still seems to be the reason that they charge higher rates, when they can, for non-medicare/medicaid patients.
So, the question is: how does Obamacare affect this phenomenon? Does it make it better, worse, or pretty much the same?
Have you a better idea? A pity you didn’t come up with it sooner, but better late than never…
Ah, the old “Oops, maybe I was wrong, so let’s change the subject before too many people notice” trick. Got nothing better than that?
John: it makes it better and worse. There will be far fewer write-offs for ER visits by the uninsured, but there will also be some reimbursement rate cuts for CMS patients.
No, you are missing the point: hospitals which actually lost money accepting Medicaid/Medicare patients would stop doing so. They’re not stupid. The reason they appear to lose money on Medicare patients is that the Feds are the largest single payer, so they can account things like capital improvement as Medicare costs and appear to lose money (to help lobbyists get their reimbursement rates jacked up.)
What part of
did you not understand?
Conclude whatever you like, John. No worries.
I said it doesn’t matter whether they are losing money or not, only if they are charging the rest of us more in order to make up for medicare/medicaid and whether or not that will change under Obamacare. That is what the question was.
Will Obamacare mean the end of the $25 aspirin? Yes or no?
The report from MedPAC, a federal agency, says 64% of hospitals lose money on Medicare patients (and they definitely lose money on Medicaid patients, since Medicaid reimbursement rates are lower than Medicare’s). Is that federal agency lying?
As for stopping - not necessarily. Hospitals need volume to maintain themselves. They get that volume from Medicare patients, and cover their losses on those patients by jacking up prices for non-Medicare ones.
But your “oversimplification” seems to be, well, wrong.
Forget all the reasons for now. Just answer this simple question: Does Obamacare make the $25/aspirin more or less prevalent, or does it stay about the same.
Because, if it doesn’t make it less prevalent, I’m curious as to why you brought that up in defense of that law.
Honestly, I don’t know the answer, but I’m not finding anything that tells me it’s going to be less prevalent.
Exactly: that volume is what keeps them solvent. MedPAC isn’t lying, it is taking the hospitals’ own cost figures at face value.
No, volume is what is needed for prestige and preventing downsizing of the hospital. What keeps them solvent is jacking up prices for non-Medicare/Medicaid patients in order to cover losses on Medicare/Medicaid ones.
Prestige? Pull the other one. If they were making a loss on Medicare patients, they’d stop taking them and the savings would allow them to cut private rates. Then they’d get all the private payer patients from other hospitals and not have to downsize. However, that doesn’t happen.
So, either: (1) hospital administrators don’t understand business; (2) insurers don’t care what they are being charged; or, (3) they aren’t actually taking a loss.