Medicare Advantage keeps growing. Rural hospitals say that's a huge problem

Jason Bleak runs Battle Mountain General Hospital, a small facility in a remote Nevada gold-mining town that he describes as "out here in the middle of nowhere." When several representatives from private health insurance companies called on him a few years ago to offer Medicare Advantage plan contracts so their enrollees could use his hospital, Bleak sent them away. "Come back to the table with a better offer," the chief executive recalls telling them. The representatives haven't returned.