Rural Wisconsin Hospitals Seek to Tax Themselves to Boost Medicaid Funding

Tags: critical-access hospitals | hospital tax | Wisconsin

Following state cuts in Medicaid funding, Wisconsin's 59 critical access hospitals in rural areas are calling for a 1.6 percent tax on their patient revenues to create $10 million a year in additional federal Medicaid matching funds to them, according to a report by the Wisconsin State Journal.

A similar tax on the state's 72 non-rural hospitals was passed in February to help offset $625 million in planned reductions in state Medicaid funding in the next two years.

More than 10 percent of a typical rural hospital's payment comes from Medicaid, up from 7 percent a few years ago, according to the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative.

Read the Wisconsin State Journal's report on the proposed Wisconsin hospital tax.

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