tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32053362.post6891086638508145554..comments2024-03-29T06:37:18.029-04:00Comments on Not Running a Hospital: Surrealism surrounds federal payment discussionsPaul Levyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17065446378970179507noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32053362.post-69405203498255685902011-09-15T09:49:17.402-04:002011-09-15T09:49:17.402-04:00Any snapshot of hospital finances can be very dece...Any snapshot of hospital finances can be very deceiving. The AHA often points to statistics showing a large percentage of hospitals losing money in a given year, but a better gauge would be a 5 to 10 year interval to look at hospital finances.<br /><br />Here in Chicago we have a building boom of shiney new hospitals and a barage of advertising to tout these new facilities and their cutting edge equipment and techniques. Each of these new hospitals will claim it loses money on Medicare, but when you invest bilions of dollars in fixed plant costs that inflate your expenses, what do you expect?<br /><br />My examination of many of these large institutions show that from year to year, many will report losses on their form 990. Almost always, these losses are due to downturns in the stock market that reflect losses in their large endowments they have stashed away, and do not relect big deficits in day to day operating costs.<br /><br />The problem is one of payment for hospital services and relates more to location of hospitals and whether a given hospital services a large populaton of uninsured and Medicaid recipients. Health care reform hopefully corrects this to some degree by insuring more of the population, but unfortunately most of this newly insured pool will have Medicaid insurance that still provides payments that do not cover full costs.<br /><br />Bottom line, I am not sure you can make the argument that Medicare cannot be cut for hospital care given what the reality dictates. Maybe the only way to stop this medical arms race is to starve the beast and make healthcare execs make hard decisions about what is most pertinent for delivery of cost effective health care to their community.Keithnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32053362.post-51293575324297832462011-09-15T06:24:20.699-04:002011-09-15T06:24:20.699-04:00From Twitter:
I agree...gridlock preferable.From Twitter:<br /><br />I agree...gridlock preferable.@jordangrumetnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32053362.post-77858769581923394972011-09-14T22:32:37.343-04:002011-09-14T22:32:37.343-04:00Medicare and Medicaid are far from the only Washin...Medicare and Medicaid are far from the only Washington discussions which have gone 'totally haywire', I fear. However, your point is excellent that none of these proposals address the root cause of the problem - continually rising health care costs, not reimbursements.<br /><br />nonlocalAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com