The Big Three hospitals are increasingly finding it difficult to pay for their own care, with the biggest beneficiary of taxpayer-funded hospital beds so far being Allegheny General Hospital.
A new report released on Thursday found the hospital is paying for just two-thirds of its beds, the same as it did in 2014-15.
In the four years up to 2017-18, Allegheny paid $13.7 million for a total of 556 beds, including $6.9 million for medical staff and $2.4 million for patients.
That’s compared to $13 million for the other three Big Three combined.
It’s also more than twice as much as it was in 2014, when it paid $6 million for 536 beds, but the total number of beds fell to 532 in 2017-19.
The biggest beneficiary is Kaiser, which paid $2 million for 474 beds.
The biggest recipient is Blue Cross Blue Shield of California, which spent $2,000 on five beds, and was paid $1.9 billion in total for health care.
The report found the Big Three’s total costs for health insurance fell by 9.5 per cent to $19.7 billion in the last four years.
It found total costs were down by just 1.5 percentage points to $24.1 billion.
It said total costs at the Big three were $18.5 billion in 2017, compared with $21.3 billion at the national average of $26.7.
However, the report found total health care spending at the big hospitals was down 9.3 per cent since 2015-16.
It also found there were more hospital bed losses, which is good news for the Big 3.
It was down 10 per cent in 2016-17, while total hospital bed costs were up 8.3 percent.