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Missouri Hospitals Swallow $1.1 Billion In Uncompensated Care

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Missouri hospitals swallowed $1.1 billion in uncompensated care in 2011. That’s according to figures released Thursday by the Missouri Hospital Association (MHA).

Hospitals provided over $622 million in charity care, an increase of 22% over the previous year. The rest of the uncompensated care comes from bad debt.

Approximately 800,000 Missourians do not have insurance, according to MHA spokesperson Dave Dillon. He says a proposed Medicaid expansion would reduce that number by 200,000 or 300,000 individuals.

“That would be a positive thing, both for a hospital bottom line, as well as it would be for the individuals who have the ability to, instead of using an emergency department for primary care, access a primary care physician,” Dillon said.

The federal government currently provides funding to hospitals to help cover the cost of uncompensated care, but those funds will dry up under the Affordable Care Act.

“Those cuts will go into place, and if we don’t have that offsetting revenue from the newly-insured, we’re really going to see a significant hit to hospital finance in Missouri,” Dillon said.

Obamacare was designed so that revenue from new insurance carriers, either through Medicaid expansion or government-subsidized care, would replace the direct government payments to hospitals.

The Missouri Hospital Association and Governor Jay Nixon support expanded Medicaid coverage in the state.

SoutheastHEALTH provided $16.8 million in uncompensated care in 2011. St. Francis Medical Center’s figure was about $17 million.