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For a patient’s knee replacement, Medicare will pay a hospital $17,000. The same hospital can get more than twice as much, or about $37,000, for the same surgery on a patient with private insurance. Or take another example: One hospital would get about $4,200 from Medicare for removing someone’s gallbladder. The same hospital would get $7,400 from commercial insurers. The yawning gap between payments to hospitals by Medicare and by private health insurers for the same medical services may prove the biggest obstacle for advocates of “Medicare for all,” a government-run system. (Ableson, 4/21)

UnitedHealth Group has been a stock market darling for much of the past decade, dependably churning out earnings increases and rewarding shareholders with staggering returns. Its latest quarterly report, issued on Tuesday, was superb, as expected. Earnings per share jumped 24 percent. Based on the news about the diversified health service company’s fundamental businesses, you might have expected its stock price to rise. Nope. UnitedHealth’s share price dropped 4 percent that day and almost 2 percent the next. And, along with much of the health care sector, it has been on a downward trend for the past few months. (Sommer, 4/19)