Despite a recent taxpayer-subsidized boon, the hospital industry spent the last several months lobbying for additional federal dollars amid warnings about the continued spread of Covid-19 and inflation’s impact on the nation’s health care system. Those efforts bore fruit: Medicare recently granted hospitals the largest price increase since 1998.
Never mind that the supply chain challenges and rising costs facing hospitals fundamentally are no different than the economic pressures confronting virtually all U.S. businesses. Instead of more effectively managing costs and improving efficiencies, hospitals expect taxpayers, businesses, and America’s workers to subsidize their cash flow and profitability.
To be sure, hospitals and the clinicians who staff them have labored mightily for two-and-a-half years to preserve life amid a disastrous global pandemic. Frontline health care workers deserve our gratitude for their heroic efforts under the most extraordinary circumstances.