Bad Debt

Medicare cuts scheduled to hit in January will cost skilled nursing facilities close to $800 million in fiscal year 2014, a new analysis estimates.

Bad debt provisions of recent legislation will cut skilled nursing facility payments by nearly $3 billion between 2012 and 2021, with a handful of states bearing the brunt of it, a report finds.

President Obama has signed legislation that delays a pay cut for doctors treating Medicare patients. That comes as good news for physicians, but not so much for nursing facilities.

While President Obama's proposed 2013 budget contains expected Medicare cuts, long-term care groups have expressed their disappointment. Among other proposals, the American Health Care Association criticized a provision of the budget that would "align Medicare policy more closely with private sector standards by reducing bad debt payments to 25% for all eligible providers over three years starting in 2013."

Forty states have either frozen or cut Medicaid-financed nursing home care for seniors between 2009 and 2011, a new survey has found.

Advocates for skilled nursing operators started a counteroffensive Monday in Washington to fight bad-debt provisions of a new House GOP spending bill. Introduced Friday, the bill asks skilled nursing operators to absorb more than $4.5 billion of $10 billion in bad debt losses.