Washington Post developing story:
The nation’s hospitals have agreed to give up $155 billion in expected revenue over the next 10 years, money that will bring the White House closer to its goal of paying for broader health coverage, an industry source said tonight. The agreement is between the White House, the Senate Finance Committee and the three major hospital groups: the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals and the Catholic Health Association. The hospital groups have agreed to reductions in Medicare payments, and the money they receive for providing uncompensated care will start being reduced. An announcement laying out the agreement is expected Wednesday morning.
3 Comments
Spotlight
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL Action
Advanced search
Are the hospitals prohibited from shit-canning the patients who require “uncompensated care”?
What about Medicare/Medicaid patients?
Does this mean the hospitals are going to reduce their profits, or are they going to figure out some way — in light of the decreased fed. payments (i.e., income) — to decrease their “expenses” (i.e., needy patients) in a similar amount?
Hospitals are more-or-less prohibited from ‘dumping’ patients by EMTALA. Medicare/Medicaid patients aren’t the problem here, what’s proposed is a reduction in the payments for uncompensated care required by EMTALA.
When EMTALA passed, no funding source was identified to pay for the care. It’s just another perverse (dis)incentive in our completely messed-up health care system.
Is this really the problem? And does it mean that they will simply transfer the costs to insured patients? Upon which, of course, the insurers will transfer the costs to their “insureds.” Smaller payments, bigger co-pays, shorter stays approved, in-patient not approved at all, etc., etc….