| > 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 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/ |