Hospitals would see their revenue fall about 35 percent on average if commercial payer rates were limited to what Medicare pays fee-for-service providers. However, the potential revenue losses vary widely by state, according to a new study published in Health Affairs.
For the study, researchers with Harvard Medical School in Boston looked at state-level price variation in the commercial market, and how it compared to Medicare, for a broader set of states and set of services than prior studies. The researchers analyzed what would happen to hospital revenue if commercial payers, whose rates are on average double Medicare's rates, mirrored Medicare.
Here are the estimated percent of revenues hospitals would have lost in 2017 if commercial payers paid the same rate as Medicare fee-for-service:
Between 40 percent and 50 percent:
Wyoming
Indiana
Oregon
Colorado
New Mexico
Wisconsin
Alaska
West Virginia
Washington
Idaho
New Hampshire
Between 39 percent and 30 percent:
Montana
Texas
California
Nebraska
Vermont
Maine
Utah
Ohio
South Dakota
Delaware
Illinois
New York
Virginia
Kansas
Oklahoma
Minnesota
Kentucky
Iowa
North Dakota
North Carolina
Arizona
Georgia
Florida
Pennsylvania
Nevada
New Jersey
Connecticut
Between 29 percent and 20 percent:
Missouri
Louisiana
Massachusetts
Tennessee
Mississippi
Hawaii
Rhode Island
Arkansas
Michigan
Between 19 percent and 10 percent
Alabama
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