A rural hospital in West Virginia has sued that state because its Medicaid reimbursements are not high enough to cover its cost.  The hospital says 72% of its revenue comes from patients covered by public programs and that those payments cover only 67% of its costs.  The result is that this level of reimbursement is putting the hospital in jeopardy.

You just can't cost shift enough with numbers like that.

This could be a harbinger of things to come.  If more people are paid at Medicaid rates, as contemplated by the Affordable Care Act, we'll see this problem more often, not just in the Appalachian region.

Seems my grandmother said something about blood and turnips...