United States hospitals provide roughly $50 billion in uncompensated care to uninsured and underinsured patients annually. Under the Affordable Care Act, a major insurance coverage expansion is taking place; this expansion is anticipated to reduce uncompensated care as more and more Americans gain insurance coverage. First, this brief examines earnings reports from major for-profit U.S. hospital chains and finds that volumes of uninsured admissions have fallen by 50-70% in states that have expanded Medicaid, and by 2-14% in states that have not expanded Medicaid. Next, the brief uses cost report data to estimate the change in hospital uncompensated care costs as a result of insurance expansion, and finds that U.S. hospitals are projected to save $5.7 billion in uncompensated care costs in 2014. About three-quarters of these savings ($4.2 billion) will accrue to states that have elected to expand Medicaid, and about a quarter ($1.5 billion) to states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid.
View HTML report
![Preview Preview](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20170125040015im_/https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/pdfpreview/fba0069f5982a935b4ec6061ff82f7f8.png)
"ib_UncompensatedCare.pdf" (pdf, 301.3Kb)
Note: Documents in PDF format require the Adobe Acrobat Reader®. If you experience problems with PDF documents, please download the latest version of the Reader®