The Supreme Court ruled that states could opt out of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. Each state gets to decide if they do or do not want to participate. For hospitals, the expansion is a no-brainer; they lose millions of dollars on patients who do not have the assets or the insurance to pay for those services. <\/p>\n
An annual report was just released by the Michigan Health and Hospital Association, which found that Michigan hospitals lost more than $1.8 billion in bills that were not paid during 2011. For 2010, they lost just 2 percent less than that. <\/p>\n
The huge bulk of that was Medicaid payments that were “shortfalls,” payments which did not cover the entire cost of care, to the tune of $804 million. The hospitals also lost about $882 million on uncollectable cases and the uninsured.<\/p>\n
Currently, 1.2 million Michiganders do not have health insurance. A Medicaid (more…)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Supreme Court ruled that states could opt out of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. Each state gets to decide if they do or do not want to participate. For hospitals, the expansion is a no-brainer; they lose millions…<\/span><\/p>\n