As Medicare margins fall to -9%, hospitals thrive on commercial payers.

But the good news is that hospitals are making healthy profits and surpluses overall on the strength of productivity gains, cost-cutting and their commercial business, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission said in a little-reported study in March. In fact, hospitals on average posted margins from all payers of 7.3% in 2014, a 30-year high, the MedPAC report shows.