Updates: Tuesday's Number

Regular readers know that each Tuesday I report on the new judgments, satisfied judgments, and bankruptcies tied to hospitals and physicians that get reported in my local paper, The Post Standard. 

So far this year, the total is about $1.5 million, even though we did have the smallest total in the year and a half that I've been doing this in the second week of the year. 

I thought it would be interesting to point out a couple of things that are at least peripherally related to my Tuesday's Number series.

First, one of the local facilities, St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center, has had its credit rating lowered by two rating agencies, Moody's and Standard and Poor's. It's a fine hospital; I've received great care there, as have other family members over the years. The reasons cited for the downgrades have to do with what I can only digest as infrastructure debt.  St. Joe's has been on a long-term project of adding services and programs and upgrading their facilities on Syracuse's North Side; the transformation in that neighborhood is truly remarkable. They've also been making some improvements in technology.  

St Joe's notes that they anticipate having all of their debt paid off in the near future - four years or so -- and that they are financially stronger than many hospitals in New York. According to the articles, their share of the inpatient market has increased from 26% in 2009 to 37% in 2013, and they've had about 17% growth in revenue in the past two years. 

From my tracking, they also have many fewer judgments and bankruptcies that Crouse and Upstate; I can say this pretty confidently after so many weeks of reviewing the data last year and the year before; this year, I can prove it, because I'm tracking each local facility separately. To date St Joe's patients account for only 7% of the total number of filings, and 3% of total dollars.  Not sure what they're doing differently, but their numbers look pretty good in comparison. And, I have some other numbers that look pretty good, at least from one perspective.

But first,very important disclaimer: I work for the health insurance company that issued the report I'm going to reference. I have no involvement, direct or indirect, in the preparation of this or any other report my company issues.  And I unequivocally do not speak for my company in any way - not in this or any other post on this blog, in other social media, or in any capacity. All opinions expressed by me are my own. 

OK -- so, my company recently issued a report on health insurance coverage in upstate New York; the report received fairly broad media coverage, which you can find through any search engine.  

Here are some of the facts from the report, which covered 2010 - 2012. There's a lot of different slicing and dicing of the numbers, but these are the starters:

• In the United States, 15.1% of us do not have health insurance; of those that do, 54.8% get it through their employer.
• In New York as a whole, 11.4% are uninsured, and 52.4% of those who are insured have employer-based coverage.
• In the Upstate area,the uninsured rate is only 8.4%, and 62.5% of us get our insurance through our employers. (For this study, 'upstate' includes Western New York, the Southern Tier, the Finger Lakes, Central New York, the Mohawk Valley, the St.Lawrence River area and the North Country, but NOT most of the Catskills, the Hudson River area, or the Capital district, that part of New York that folks who eat salsa from New York City tend to refer to as 'upstate.')

The report notes that in our neck of the woods, in some measures we're already exceeding targeted insured percentages for 2023. It seems that we Upstaters collectively are doing something right, doesn't it? 

So -- I'm left wondering, what would the Tuesday's Number be if we didn't have such a high percentage of insureds?  Remember, last year my non-scholarly tracking totaled almost $29.5 million in filings, and for 2012, I only tracked it for about half the year and we had another $11.6 million in that time.  

That's over $41 million in judgments (owed or satisfied) and bankruptcies that are easily identifiable as being related to medical debt -- just in the Syracuse area. Think about that. 

Over $41 million, 18 months or so, just in my backyard, just the obvious ones. There's no telling how many of the folks who file bankruptcy because of credit card debt are under water because they had to charge medical bills.  And, don't forget, all of the local hospitals offer some kind of financial assistance.  

It seems pretty clear that some things are not yet working as desired, and that we collectively (people, employers, insurance companies, regulators, and yes, those pesky politicians) have some more work to do.

Got any ideas?