In the February 8th New York Times, under the headline Bills Stalled, Hospitals Fear Rising Unpaid Care, Reed Abelson reports:

President Obama says he aims to keep trying. But what happens if the health care legislation cannot be revived, and tens of millions of uninsured Americans continue without coverage?

For the nation’s hospitals, at least, the cost of doing nothing in Washington translates into tens of billions of dollars each year in medical bills that go unpaid by patients with little or no insurance.

Abelson then goes on to report that “The number of people without insurance in this country could increase to as high as 58 million by 2014, from about 49 million now,” but then he completely fails to report how well Obama’s health care plan would solve the uninsured problem.

According to the President’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Senate health care plan would reduce the number of uninsured from an estimated 57 million by 2019 under current law, to 24 million if the Senate plan became law. In other words, the Obama health care plan would reduce the number of patients seeking unpaid care by just a little over half.

Worse, of the 33 million people who gain health insurance, over half of those would gain coverage through Medicaid which, as Abelson does report, already reimburses hospitals below their costs. And that does not even begin to account for the $493 billion in cuts that the Senate bill would take from health care providers like our nation’s hospitals.

New York Times readers deserve to know the benefits and costs of Obama’s health care plan. Reading the CMS report on the Senate and House bills would be a good place for Abelson to start.