One group, Partners is making money, while others are starving and it has to do with contracts with insurers and patient mix, charity and those insured. Click on the picture below to get the background on Partners in Boston from a video on the Boston Globe.
Blue Cross can’t be complaining too bad as they made 57 million profit in the 3rd quarter and have started a Venture Capital firm and bank to boot, so the higher rates don’t they pay Partners don’t seem to have any effect, and there’s always the “reserves”, which nobody seems to ever discuss much, but the reserves are piles of money that is sitting in the bank for “just in case”, billions if added up across the country if not a trillion or two. So we have this picture and hospitals taking patients to court to get bills paid, make sense?
Is this a bail out for some and a profitability roll out for others? We have some of the same in California too with contracts and they are some of the lowest in the nation as well, the “have” and “have not” hospitals. See the Desperate Hospital series for more information on how many I found that are taking extreme measures or have already filed bankruptcy in the US in the last few months. BD
Governor Deval Patrick will convene a panel of top state officials Monday to look into whether a recently disclosed, eight-year-old agreement between Partners HealthCare System Inc. and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts drove up healthcare costs, making it harder to extend healthcare insurance to all residents.
The panel will also look at current contract negotiations between Partners, the state's biggest health care provider, and healthcare insurers to see whether the negotiations might also create artificially high rates that threaten healthcare reform, officials said.
On the other hand we have this, also happening in Massachusetts
Healthcare groups push for federal bailout funds
Cutbacks to healthcare, among the state's largest industries, could produce a "ripple effect, extending to nursing agencies, equipment suppliers, and other businesses that support hospitals," the Massachusetts Hospital Association warned in a recent letter to the governor. The letter noted there are 479,000 healthcare and social service jobs in Massachusetts.
Joe Kirkpatrick, the association's vice president for healthcare finance, said patients, particularly those with mental illnesses, will feel the effects of continued hospital cutbacks.
State panel to examine payments to Partners - The Boston Globe
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