Hospital admissions and costs for firearm injuries show wide regional variation, according to a study published online on May 2 in Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open. The researchers found there were 317,479 firearm-related admissions during the study period. Hospital costs in the Northeast were $1.98 billion (13.9% of total; 56% covered by government payers) versus $1.53 billion in the Midwest (19.7% of total; 40.4% covered by government payers).
Every year a silent killer threatens more American lives than cigarette smoking and opioid addiction combined. It lurks behind premature deaths attributed to cardiovascular disease, cancer, COVID-19 and obesity. The Grim Reaper here is a healthcare finance system perversely designed to limit access to quality care. No, this is not about failure to provide urgent or emergency care as needed. Rather, this finance regime outright denies and rations medical interventions on the basis of poverty, race, ethnicity and gender — then covers its tracks by offering no accounting of the health effect of its rules and procedures.
Sacramento-based Sutter Health reported $199 million in income from operations for 2021, rebounding from an operating loss of $321 million in the prior year.
When asked to explain the causes of the layoffs and demotions of several top administrators at Memorial Hospital at Gulfport, CEO Kent Nicaud said the staff shake-up was meant to ease the financial hit Memorial suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Memorial has sustained increasingly large operating losses in each of the last three fiscal years, and a net loss of $61 million during its 2021 fiscal year (which began in October 2020).
According to the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association, hospitals that responded to its recent survey reported losing a collective $262 million in January and $168 million more in February 2022, for a $430 million total loss to begin the year.
The administration's new actions could help ease the burden of medical debts that Americans already have — they do less to prevent Americans from being saddled with high medical bills they can't pay in the first place.