Medicaid expansion is a windfall for hospitals

Hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid have more paying customers, bolstering the bottom lines of for-profit hospital chains, a new analysis published on Wednesday shows. "For-profit health systems, operating more than 500 hospitals in the U.S., report far better financial returns through the first half of the year than expected," the report(PDF) from PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute found. One chain,LifePoint Hospitals (LPNT), reported a 30 percent drop in "self-pay" patients, whose care hospitals often write off as a loss. The Affordable Care Act was intended to eliminate situations where poor, uninsured patients land in emergency rooms and receive treatment for which hospitals don't get paid.