Cleveland Clinic sees 40 percent drop in charity care with Obamcare

buckie · Apr 4, 2015

Cleveland Clinic sees 40 percent drop in charity care with Obamcare

byJ
oan McCarter

The Cleveland Clininc, one of U.S. News & World Report's top four hospitals in the United States, says it spent 40 percent less on uncompensated care for the uninsured in just the past year. That's $70 million less spent in 2014 than in 2013. It's thanks, the hospital says, to expanded Medicaid coverage under Obamacare as well as expanded coverage on the exchange.

"The decrease in charity care is primarily attributable to the increase in Medicaid patients due to the expansion of Medicaid eligibility in the State of Ohio and the resulting decrease in the number of charity patients," the hospital's year-end financial statement reported.

That 40 percent drop spotlights a trend in how payments are changing for all providers since the health law rolled out the Medicaid expansion and subsidies that help some lower-income people purchase policies on the new insurance marketplaces, said John Palmer, spokesperson for Ohio Hospital Association.

"Now that you're starting to see that shift from uninsured or underserved on over into health care programs such as Medicaid and the exchange, that has had a good impact," he said. "And, obviously, it is reflective of what hospitals are experiencing with uncompensated care in the areas of charity care especially."

That's part of the total $2.6 billion saved by hospitals around the country, according to the administration. Contrast that with the hospital closures, particularly in rural areas in states that didn't expand Medicaid and can't afford to keep operating when they have to treat the uninsured.

Obamacare was intended to end the problem of uncompensated care, and Medicaid expansion was one of the ways it was supposed to do it. In order to pay for it, hospitals agreed to take reduced Medicare reimbursements and big cuts in Disproportionate Share Hospital, or DSH, funding, which the federal government pays to offset the costs of uncompensated care. Then in 2012 the Supreme Court intervened, and decided that states could reject the expansion. The cuts remained in place, and hospitals that treat uninsured patients in the non-expansion states have endured the consequences.

NobleCo · Apr 4, 2015