Obamacare Dividends Pile Up for Hospitals as Patients Pay
By Alex Wayne and Shannon Pettypiece Jul 30, 2014 9:18 AM ET
Even as Obamacare continues to be attacked by foes and challenged in court, hospital chains and insurers are making more money, more patients using ERs are paying for their care, and the country as a whole is enjoying slower growth in its health-care spending.
HCA Holdings Inc., the largest for-profit hospital chain, yesterday raised its forecast and reported a 6.6 percent drop in uninsured patients at its 165 hospitals, a reduction that grows to 48 percent in four states that expanded Medicaid, a top initiative of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. WellPoint Inc., which made the biggest commitment of any publicly traded insurer to the Obamacare markets, raised its guidance today after handily beating analyst estimates for the quarter on rising membership linked to the overhaul.
Taxpayers too may be benefiting from the law approved in 2010. Medicare spending rose by just $1 per beneficiary in 2013, the fourth year in a row that saw a slowdown, the government reported yesterday.
“Obamacare’s turned out to be quite good for health-care companies,” said Les Funtleyder, a portfolio manager at Esquared asset management, in a telephone interview.
LifePoint Hospitals Inc., another for-profit chain, also raises its forecast yesterday while the largest insurer, UnitedHealth Group Inc., said earlier this month it added 635,000 people to its Medicaid plans and was expanding into two dozen Obamacare exchanges in 2015, from five this year.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-30/obamacare-dividends-pile-up-for-hospitals-as-patients-pay.html
