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While Kentucky has gained national prominence as the only Southern state to fully embrace Obamacare, its hospitals say the law has left them facing billions of dollars in cuts and forced them to lay off staff, shut down services and worry for their financial health and, in some cases, survival. The Kentucky Hospital Association outlined its concerns in a report released Friday called "Code Blue," saying payment cuts to hospitals are expected to reach nearly $7 billion through 2024. "Kentucky hospitals will lose more money under the Affordable Care Act than they gain in revenue from expanded coverage," it said, experiencing a net loss of $1 billion by 2020. (Ungar, 5/8)

Rural hospitals, according to the KHA report, will be hit especially hard. State Auditor Adam Edelen recently found that 34 percent of rural hospitals, where an average of 72 percent of patients are covered by Medicaid or Medicare, were considered to be in poor financial health. The KHA report said that 70 of the state's 109 hospitals have laid off a total of 7,700 employees in the past two years. That's about a 10 percent reduction of hospital workers. (Meehan, 5/8)

New York City’s public hospital system is looking at a major cash squeeze within four years if federal cuts to hospitals serving large numbers of poor and uninsured patients take place as scheduled, according to a report by the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, to be released on Monday. Beginning in 2017, the federal government will begin cutting subsidies to those hospitals, based on the theory that since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which has insured millions of Americans, hospitals will no longer need the same level of subsidies for uncompensated care. (Hartocollis, 5/10)