Voices in Healthcare

I have great respect for Nancy Kane - we served on the Payment Reform Commission together - but her  assertion that hospitals can "survive and even profit from Medicare payments" (A Peek Under the Hood on Medicare Payments, April 1)  is oversimplifying a complicated issue and painting with too broad a brush. It just doesn't ring true in Massachusetts. The fact is that 77% of Massachusetts hospitals are losing money on Medicare business in 2010, yet our state's hospital costs per discharge are lower than their peers regionally and nationwide. While Cape Cod Hospital and others have sought and found efficiencies wherever possible, Medicare payments have not kept pace with the operational cost increases that hospitals face. Over the past 13 years Medicare payments to Massachusetts hospitals have increased 20.9% but prices for the goods and services hospitals must purchase to deliver care have risen by 56% -That adds up to one big and unsustainable shortfall.