New FGA Research Shows ObamaCare Expansion is No Cure For Hospitals’ Financial Woes
- BY FGA
Naples, FL — Medicaid expansion has not materially improved the financial health of struggling hospitals, according to new research from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA). In many states that have expanded Medicaid—Arkansas, Kentucky, and Nevada chief among them—hospitals continue to close with more rural hospitals in financial distress than in nearby non-expansion states.
An analysis of six full years of hospital financial data and more than 1,700 hospitals, comparing states that had chosen to expand Medicaid with those that had not, found that expansion was found to be associated with higher Medicaid payment shortfalls, and had close to zero net effect on hospital finances. Worse yet, nearly 40 percent of Medicaid expansion states lost hospital jobs in the first year of the program, while non-expansion states are growing hospital jobs roughly 14 percent faster than expansion states.
“ObamaCare Medicaid expansion advocates repeatedly promised that this massive expansion of welfare would save hospitals and put a hospital on every street corner. But the data tells a much different story,” said Nicholas Horton, research director at FGA. “Many expansion states are losing hospitals and hospital jobs, including states like Arkansas that have long been heralded as expansion success stories by the Left. In fact, based on this new data, if states really want to help their hospitals, they’ll reject ObamaCare expansion.”
Read the full report here.
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The Foundation for Government Accountability is a non-profit, multi-state think tank that specializes in health care, welfare, and work reform. To learn more, visit TheFGA.org
