It’s not just VA hospitals or North Carolina’s state-run mental hospitals that have problems. The nation’s largest public hospital, Grady Memorial in Atlanta, may lose its accreditation because local, state, and federal governments refuse to pay for charity or emergency care provided by the hospital. The hospital is also hurt by the low reimbursement rates from Medicaid.


The business model used by Grady and other public hospitals is “no longer sustainable,” as one-third of patients lack health insurance and one-third are Medicaid beneficiaries, which reimburses at rates “well below” hospital costs, according to the Times. Many public hospitals use revenue from the treatment of patients with private health insurance to help cover the cost of charity care, but “better-financed private and nonprofit hospitals are able to market their services and high-tech equipment to patients with good insurance coverage, including those on Medicare,” the Times reports


I guess they could add cancer treatment for pets to raise money.