Community Health Systems Inc., the second-largest U.S. hospital system, cut its earnings outlook for the year as admissions decline. The shares fell 19 percent. Income from continuing operations will be $2.95 to $3.25 a share, the Franklin, Tennessee-based company said today in a statement. Analysts were expecting profit of $3.65 a share, the average of 24 estimates (CYH:US) compiled by Bloomberg. The company said second-quarter revenue was little changed at $3.24 billion. Weaker patient volume and higher-than-anticipated bad debts are helping stall revenue growth, Community Health said.
President Obama is set to speak this morning about how the health-care law is cutting premiums for millions of Americans. His remarks will focus on a small Affordable Care Act provision known to health wonks as the "medical loss ratio." Rolls right off the tongue, right? Maybe not. But the medical loss ratio (described as the "80/20 rule" by the White House) is arguably one of the most effective tools the White House has to hold down premium costs. And it's the provision that the White House is homing in on, in arguing that the health-care law will make health care cheaper for American families.
Liberty Hospital near Kansas City, Mo., has eliminated 120 jobs this year, closed its wound-care clinic, and stopped offering free rides to poor and elderly patients. The Cleveland Clinic is searching for ways to cut $250 million from its $6 billion budget in the next 16 months. It's already closed expensive maternity wards in half the hospitals it operates. In northern New York, Adirondack Health may shutter its emergency room in Lake Placid and a dialysis center in Tupper Lake. All of these hospitals and scores of others nationwide are squeezing services to make up for unexpected budget shortfalls—the result of a deal they made with the federal government that they're now having second thoughts about.
The Obama administration is counting on Latinos to help make the Affordable Care Act a success, but there may be troubles ahead: Hispanic health centers and community organizations say they don't have the funding or resources to carry out the complicated sign up process for the 10 million Latinos who will be eligible for new public and subsidized health coverage options. "Even with the federal grants given out, it does not nearly cover the populations we have to reach and the amount of work we have to do," says Lori Baptista, director of policy at the Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center Inc. in Hayward, California.
Premiums for some medical plans to be sold to the uninsured next year will be 18 percent less costly than government analysts expected under President Barack Obama's signature health-care law, his administration reported. A benchmark measure of the Affordable Care Act's promise shows monthly rates for "silver" plans will average $321 in 11 states examined in a report today from the Health and Human Services Department. Congressional Budget Office estimates from last year saw silver premium rates averaging $392, HHS said. Obama touted the findings at a White House event designed to promote the benefits of a law that his Republican opponents in Congress are trying to derail before the core provisions take hold Jan. 1.
Texas officials have declined to establish a state-based health insurance marketplace, a major provision of the federal Affordable Care Act. So private organizations are working to educate Texans about coverage options through the federal health insurance exchange, which opens on Oct. 1. Of the more than 6.3 million uninsured Texans — the state has the country's highest rate of uninsured residents — almost half will be eligible to buy insurance through the federal exchange, an online tool for coverage shopping. But Texans suffer from a "general lack of knowledge" about the law, said Allison Brim, a director at the Texas Organizing Project, one of several groups working to reach uninsured families before the federal exchange's rollout.