Despite higher inflation and dwindling COVID-19 relief funding from the federal government, the nation’s three largest for-profit health systems so far this year have operating margins that meet or exceed levels in 2019 before the pandemic.
The federal system meant to stop healthcare business owners and executives from repeatedly bilking government health programs fails to do so, a KHN investigation has found. That means people are once again tapping into Medicaid, Medicare, and other taxpayer-funded federal health programs after being legally banned because of fraudulent or illegal behavior.
Tim Buck knows by heart how many people died from drug overdoses in his North Carolina county last year: 10. The year before it was 12 — an all-time high. Those losses reverberate deeply in rural Pamlico County, a tightknit community of 12,000 on the state’s eastern shore. Over the past decade, it’s had the highest rate of opioid overdose deaths in North Carolina. Now, the county is receiving money from national settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors to address the crisis. But by the time those billions of dollars are divided among states and localities, using formulas partially based on population, what trickles down to hard-hit places like Pamlico County can be a trifling sum.
Another major health system merger is in the works in Michigan. On Thursday, the University of Michigan Health System announced it was purchasing Sparrow Health System in Mid-Michigan.