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by Spooky23
3006 days ago
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As with all things healthcare, yes and no. Private, for profit insurance is almost certainly always evil. Their margins are dictated by how much they can delay or avoid coverage. That pretty much defines evil. Medicare is why hospitals exist, period. Private insurers make it as difficult as possible to stay in a hospital, because they are more expensive and usually result in worse outcomes. Reimbursement rates are being squeezed because there is a glut of hospital beds. As a result, hospitals, designed to operate with higher overheads, are losing money. There’s a whole web of bullshit where the lack of universal coverage and rational allocation of resources results in strange behaviors. |
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this is not true. check out the annual financial reports for the UC hospital system as an example [0]. the majority of revenue comes from commercial payers. looking at data from HCA (largest public hospital company in US) tells similar story [1]. this is despite the fact that medicare patients are more costly overall
the bigger issue, however, are the margins. in 2010, UCSF, UC Davis and UCI had 3.5% profit margin for medicare, -27% margin for medicaid, and 21.8% margin for commercial. for UCLA they had -30% profit for medicare, -36% for medicaid, and 34% margin for commercial. private insurance literally subsidizes public insurance here. without private insurance, those hospitals die [2]
looking at other hospitals id imagine it is similar, though dont have data offhand
as to the reimbursement rates being squeezed bc of glut of beds, i dont think that is true and have seen data in the past to refute it, though i dont have the sources offhand.
[0] http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/nov13/a4at...
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/860730/0001193125180...
[2] https://www.oshpd.ca.gov/HID/