Uncompensated

Maryland needs to raise substantial new revenues to expand health insurance coverage as it identifies ways to close next year's projected $1.5 billion state budget shortfall, leading lawmakers said yesterday. After failed efforts during this year's General Assembly session to reduce the number of Marylanders without health insurance - about 780,000 - a joint committee of state senators and delegates is pushing to develop a consensus behind a health care expansion within the next four months.

The bill for an average stay in a Maryland hospital was $5,384 last year, 7.41 percent more than in the previous year, according to a report yesterday from the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission.Although the percentage increase was held to less than 10 percent and was below the national average, charges per day increased 11.5 percent, to $836.13, the report showed.JTC Much of the effect of that increase was offset, however, by a 4 percent decline during the year in the length of an average stay in a hospital, said John M. Colmers, executive director of the commission, which regulates hospital fees.

IN ONE DAY about a month ago, the stock of Integrated Health Systems Inc., an Owings Mills-based company that provides subacute post-hospitalization care, fell 15 percent. The stock plunged after IHS projected that its earnings would fall 10 percent to 25 percent a share because of federal efforts to rein in the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, which pay health costs for the elderly and the poor.As part of the budget process, both houses of Congress have approved plans to reduce the growth of spending on the two health programs.

Maryland hospitals last year posted their smallest cost increase on record -- and their largest profits -- according to a report yesterday by the state's hospital rate-setting board.The cost of an average hospital stay in Maryland -- the amount the hospital spent to treat the patient -- was $5,693, up just 1.63 percent from 1994. But charges -- the amount paid by the patient or insurance company -- increased 3.0 percent, so hospital profits jumped 93 percent, said the annual report of the Health Services Cost Review Commission.

Soldiers' stories tell a brutal tale Thanks for publishing the column "Winter soldiers" by Madeleine Mysko (Opinion Commentary, March 19). As we enter the sixth year of the war in Iraq, it is important that newspapers such as The Sun let the public hear the horrifying words of those who have returned from the front lines, the winter soldiers. I appreciated how Ms. Mysko, a former second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, wove her story from the Vietnam era with the testimony of a veteran of the Iraq war, Jason Hurd of the U.S. Army, who spoke along with other veterans, their parents and friends last weekend in Silver Spring.

A growing number of legislative leaders are boldly predicting that the General Assembly will pass meaningful health care reform before this session adjourns in mid-April. If it does, they say, Maryland could become a model for the country even before Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care task force completes its work."I don't think we can sit and wait for Washington to come up with something," said House Speaker R. Clayton Mitchell Jr., D-Kent. "I think we have a golden opportunity in the state to move ahead this year."

This time of year, Mercy Medical Center's chief executive, Thomas R. Mullen, takes a look back at his budget, and for 2010 he sees $40 million in unpaid bills. He knows much of that will be passed on to the rest of Mercy's patients, through raised rates that their private insurers and Medicaid and Medicare will have to pay. It's a "hidden tax" that the public pays in some way in every state — one that federal health care reform aims to curb. And while most agree that the burden will decline for the nation's paying customers in coming years as more Americans become insured, administrators wonder just how much savings there will be for caregivers and patients.

Gilchrist Hospice Care raised more than $218,000 to help pay for uncompensated care at its 27th annual Taste & Auction of Howard County. The money will benefit patients at Gilchrist Center Howard County, which opened last year. Nearly 500 people attended the event Sunday at Turf Valley that featured food tastings from 23 Howard County restaurants that included Aida Bistro, Clyde's of Columbia and Tersiguel's. There also was a live auction and a silent auction for such items as gourmet wines, gift baskets, Ravens tickets and a trip to Hawaii.

The outcome of last week's presidential election has vindicated the wisdom of Maryland's early decision to begin setting up a state health exchange where consumers can shop for affordable health insurance coverage. President Barack Obama's victory virtually assures that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act he signed in 2010 will go into effect as planned in 2014. Having survived constitutional challenges in the Supreme Court earlier this year and an election-year campaign pledge by GOP challenger Mitt Romney to dismantle the law if elected, states across the country must now start setting up similar exchanges or face having the federal government do it for them.

As a native New Yorker living in Dundalk, Evelyn Lugo uses e-mail to keep in touch with friends and family in the Northeast. As an accounting student at Strayer University, she uses it to communicate with her professors. So as a parent, why shouldn't she also turn to e-mail when she wants a word with her son's pediatrician? "It'd be convenient if he's sick and I have to ask some questions," said Lugo, 23, the mother of a 19-month-old named Odany. "I think that's a good option."