May 06, 2014
Viewed in a vacuum, no other program in the U.S. healthcare system has been as influential during the past 50 years than Medicare.
Medicare has mostly done what President Lyndon B. Johnson and other social reformers had hoped it would do: provide healthcare access to the nation’s oldest citizens. For hospitals and health systems, Medicare is the benchmark for all reimbursements, and depending who you ask, that may be a good or bad thing.
According to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the average Medicare margin for a U.S. hospital in 2012 was -5.4 percent. That means for every dollar a hospital spent treating a Medicare patient, the hospital received a little less than 95 cents in return.
