Lack Of Medicaid Expansion Hurts Rural Hospitals – WebMD

continued…How much these differences matter, though, remains up in the air.
“There is a disparity in the impact of Medicaid expansion, and probably the [law] overall,” said Brystana Kaufman, a doctoral candidate at the university’s department of health policy and management and the study’s first author. “There needs to be more exploration into why we’re seeing this.”
One likely factor: Rural hospitals serve more low-income people — who weren’t eligible for insurance before, but who got covered after the health law took effect. And rural hospitals are historically more likely to operate at a loss than are urban ones. So the chance to see increased revenue is greater than in a city-based hospital.
That said, these are preliminary figures, looking at barely a year’s worth of evidence when it comes to the Medicaid expansion. But the effect merits further scrutiny, experts said.
It’s important …
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