Hospitals Feeling the Pain of Loss of Pandemic Aid
The end of some forms of federal COVID-19 financial assistance is causing financial pain for some hospitals – especially safety-net hospitals that care for especially large numbers of uninsured patients. During the pandemic, the federal government reimbursed hospitals for testing, vaccinating, and treating uninsured COVID patients; now it does not. During the pandemic, some people, including many who are uninsured, put off seeking to address their health problems because they feared going to a hospital and encountering the highly contagious virus. Now, these individuals are showing up at hospitals’ doors seeking care, have no insurance, their medical problems have grown [...]