re: #241 Gus

What about hospital profits?

The number of hospitals that are for-profit is actually pretty small. It’s smaller than the number of straight-up government hospitals, and is much smaller than the number of non-profit private hospitals (like the teaching hospitals associated with med schools). Most for-profit medical care takes place in the context of the doctor’s office rather than the hospital.

That said, the ACA has a very significant, and, to me, very welcome change. For for-profit hospitals that take medicare money, they’ve dispensed with the fee-for-service model and instead hospitals are paid per condition. This basically takes away the incentive to order unnecessary tests, and was a major source of medicare fraud or near-fraud. This is in place for non-profits too, but it has a more significant effect on for-profits.

Basically, the ACA now rewards outcomes more than efforts for for-profit hospitals.