Now I'm gonna be generous and give you THREEEEEEEEEEE multiple choice guesses.
Who is making out like a bandit with our current health care system?
- You
- Hospitals
- Health Insurance Companies
Hint: It's probably not you.
If you chose Hospitals, you're also wrong. Hospitals are oozing red like a anemic, shotgun victim in a strawberry Kool-Aid plant and they're in very real danger of closing their doors.
The Thomson Reuters analysis concludes that about 50 percent of U.S. hospitals are losing money, and that total margins for U.S. hospitals declined last year. The worst-performing hospitals had margins of negative-7 percent, while the best performing hospitals' margins topped 4.5 percent.
First: Inpatient numbers are dropping for both elective procedures and NECESSARY procedures. Particularly, for some bizarre reason, hip replacements (?). Why? Because people don't have any frickin' money. That's why. Some studies will say that there's no correlation between GDP or unemployment and inpatient numbers, but 45% of hospitals reporting drop offs in admittance will tell you that's a big load of horse shit.
Second: "Bad debts" and "charity care" are skyrocking for hospitals. That's code for "the sick folks what we helped ain't payin' up." Let's not forget that hospitals perform an important service to their communities and at least in the short term absorb much of the economic hardship when people can't pay for critical care.
Third: Hospitals can't get loans for the same reason most businesses can't get loans. And tax free bonds are also drying up. More importantly, hospital donations are a shadow of what they were a couple years ago. As their revenue streams dry up and they experience more outlays due to "bad debts" they require more leant to stay in business and they can't get that cash.
Fourth: Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance reimbursements aren't what they used to be. I don't understand point exactly, all I know is what I'm reading in the pile of research materials I have in front of me and it says "reimbursement rates shrinking: payments hospitals receive from Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers were declining through the end of 2008." I can't give a source because I don't know if it's proprietary or not.
As of February a Chicago hospital, the University of Chicago Medical center slashed 450 staff, 15 senior managers, and 30 inpatient beds in an attempt to stay afloat.
The University of Chicago's medical centre, Chicago BioMedicine, is axing 450 staff in a bid to save $100m a year, it has been revealed.
The move follows the termination of 15 senior managers last month, part of cost-cutting exercises "accelerated by the economy", the hospital said in a statement.
The medical centre also will cut 30 inpatient beds, reduce weekend hours at a surgical unit and redirect non-emergency care patients to other facilities, according to the statement.
Pretty scary stuff. If you and I arent' properly serviced by the health care system we currently have, and hospitals aren't properly nurtured by the health care system we currently have, and doctors are struggling with the current health care system we have...then who is benefitting from the current health care system we have?
Why have all of us put up with this crap for so long?
Here are some links for further reading
http://www.wtnh.com/...
http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/...
http://www.latimes.com/...