According to Kaiser Health News, the ACA has helped safety net hospitals see more insured patients…
At Seattle’s largest safety-net hospital, the proportion of uninsured patients fell from 12 percent last year to an unprecedented low of 2 percent this spring—a drop expected to boost HarborviewMedicalCenter’s revenue by $20 million this year….
Such facilities had expected to see a drop in uninsured patients seeking treatment, but the change has been faster and deeper than most anticipated— at least in the 25 states that expanded Medicaid in January, according to interviews with safety-net hospital officials across the country.
But, that was not the only predicted outcome for formerly uninsured patients…
(In Seattle)… Hospital officials say the biggest impact of the change is on patients themselves. Rather than having to rely on emergency rooms, newly insured patients can see primary care doctors and get diagnostic tests and prescription drugs, among other services.
Some safety-net hospitals say they started to see their numbers of uninsured patients dropping almost immediately after the Medicaid expansion took effect in January…
About 80 percent of the system’s new Medicaid patients had previously been seen by the hospital as uninsured patients, she said. Their enrollment in coverage means the hospital is paid more for their care and is able to direct them to outpatient services and preventive care.
Here is Georgia, where the Medicaid expansion was refused by Governor Nathan Deal, the state legislators this past spring passed a law that the expansion can only be approved by the legislators. In the current political makeup at the State Capitol that approval has very little chance of happening. The result has been putting a real strain on rural South Georgia community hospitals and as many as 14 may close by the end of the year.
But, Deal has a plan…
A plan by Gov. Nathan Deal to help Georgia’s ailing rural hospitals could be too little too late for some hospitals on life-support and may not do much good for others.
The plan, sparked by a recent spate of rural hospital closures, enables hospitals in danger of shutting down, or that have closed in the past year, to downsize into freestanding emergency departments to cut costs. The departments would stabilize patients, then send them to nearby full-service hospitals.
This plan is being directed by the state with the new Rural Hospital Stabilization Committee. And no one is saying how it will be funded…
…One thing that won’t be an option: accepting federal money to expand Medicaid to adults without dependent children. That move would cover a half-million poor Georgians. The Republican-controlled legislature opposes the Affordable Care Act, which created the expansion, and says Medicaid expansion would cost the state too much in the long run.
That’s a mistake, says Tim Sweeney, health policy director at the nonprofit Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. “If the primary issue is the financial stability of rural hospitals, then expanding Medicaid should be step one,” he says.
Georgia is missing out on $31 billion in federal money for the state’s health care system over the next decade by not expanding Medicaid, he says. “We know that it would provide significant new funding for hospitals in rural Georgia that are serving uninsured patients right now.”
If Georgia accepted the Medicaid expansion, approximately 486,000 people would be eligible for Medicaid and Peachcare for children.
The VA health care budget + the Medicare budget + the Medicaid budget = almost a trillion dollars. Add to that however many billions the ACA will cost us and we’re pretty close to 26% of the entire federal budget. If we cut out the middlemen, the insurance corporations, how many billions of dollars would we save? The entire system is a scam meant to favor the 1%.