Universal Health Services CEO: ObamaCare Ruling No Surprise

On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld its ruling on ObamaCare subsidies, allowing more than 8 million Americans to keep their health insurance. Universal Health Services CEO Alan Miller told FOX Business Network’s Liz Claman in an exclusive interview that the Supreme Court ruled as he expected.

“I wasn’t surprised. I’m not a constitutional lawyer, but it won’t be chaotic, we’ll go on with our business… we take care of patients and now we will have more patients able to pay,” said Miller, who added the program has benefits. “We’ve seen that with ObamaCare, our bad debt and uncompensated care has gone down about 25%. We take care of patients in a very good way and now we’ll get more pay for it.”

Universal Health Services’ (NYSE:UHS) Miller explained the difference the company faced before and after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law.

“We had to provide care. We did provide the care, and in many cases 25% more said we’re sorry, we don’t have a means of payment, we don’t have insurance, we will try and pay the bill at some point… and that wasn’t very satisfactory. Now, we provide the service, we get paid for the service and that’s how business works.”

The ruling came as reports surfaced that Aetna (NYSE:AET) may be close to buying Humana (NYSE:HUM), according to Bloomberg. Earlier this week, Anthem (NASDAQ:ANTH) offered $47 billion for Cigna (NYSE:CI), which the company’s board rejected, calling it “inadequate”.

Miller added that the attempted consolidation in the insurance market benefits his company. “If the insurers are stronger, the premiums that they are able to charge will be more firm. Having more firm premiums, we’ll be able to hope that we get paid as our expenses increase.”