This is hardly a new problem, but it’s yet another aspect of Trumpcare that gets too little attention.
Texas hospitals stand to lose billions under the Republican-backed health plan, as federal Medicaid dollars shrink, leading to a rise in uncompensated care, according to a new analysis by the Commonwealth Fund, a national health policy foundation.
The study looked only at the U.S. House plan passed last month. It has not yet examined the impact of the U.S. Senate’s version unveiled late last week, which experts have predicted will bring even deeper cuts to Medicaid.
In Texas, uncompensated costs in the state’s 304 acute care hospitals could increase by 7 percent, rising to $38.4 billion over the next decade, the study found.
That compares with an estimated $35.8 billion over the next decade under the current Affordable Care Act.
At issue is a spike in the number of the nation’s uninsured whose care is often absorbed by hospitals. As many as 23 million Americans could become uninsured over the next decade under the House bill because of cuts to Medicaid, and the recalculation of insurance plans and how people afford them, the Congressional Budget Office estimated late last month.
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Texas already leads the nation in the number of uninsured and hospital executives have cautioned that their institutions would be hard pressed to take a bigger hit should the uninsured rate go higher.
“If people think Harris Health can absorb this, that is a miscalculation,” said George Masi, president and CEO of Harris Health System, in a January interview with the Chronicle.
This is basically what the world was like before the Affordable Care Act. People who had no insurance would use hospital emergency rooms for care when they really needed it, which is inefficient and dangerous and super expensive and many other negative things, all of which get picked up by local taxpayers. There are so many things that are wrong with and bad about the GOP’s “health care” plan that it’s hard to focus on any one thing and even harder to prioritize, but this one is really big. And it will hurt rural areas at least as much as urban areas. Not that the Republicans who represent rural areas care, and it’s not clear that the voters who would be affected have figured it out, or if they have if they’re capable of getting past their faith in the Charlatan in Chief. But the facts are stubborn things. The Rivard Report has more.
The best way to reduce the amount of unpaid ER service, especially in Texas, would be to vigorously deport undocumented immigrants. Put a couple La Migra officers at each hospital at hospital expense, and you’ll see a drastic decline in people who don’t pay.