“Medicaid expansion is expanding profits for a bunch of hospitals.
A new analysis of major for-profit health systems found that hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid eligibility under Obamacare are seeing far fewer uninsured patients, a large rise in paying patients and more revenue as a consequence—which stands in stark contrast to hospitals in nonexpansion states.
For example, there was about a 47 percent decrease in the rate of admissions of uninsured or self-paying patients at the hospitals in expansion states in the first half of 2014. Yet, hospitals in nonexpansion states either saw a slight reduction in such admissions or no decreases at all, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute. ”