Study: Medicare flows unevenly to hospitals

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The government's bill for treating chronically ill seniors and the disabled in the nation's teaching hospitals is nearly four times higher at some of those medical centers than others, says a report out today.

The reason? Sharp differences in how long patients spend in the hospitals during the final two years of their lives and how often they see doctors, say researchers at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

The study comes amid rising health care costs and a report by Medicare's trustees that the program's hospital fund will go broke in 11 years. The report says taxpayers could save billions of dollars if hospitals practiced more efficiently.

Teaching hospitals, affiliated with medical schools, train the next generation of doctors and typically deal with complex cases and use cutting-edge technology.

USA Today

How do one expect to create a worthy study of medical care costs in the U.S. when over 47 million are uninsured and millions more underinsured?

Did they factor in the 'Medicare flow' to Carlyle Group and other private equity companies before they offered more medical cost savings?