Medicare Advantage keeps growing. Tiny, rural hospitals say that's a huge problem

Since 2010, 150 rural hospitals have closed in the United States. Hospital leaders say that Medicare Advantage pays slowly and sometimes not at all and that this could push more hospitals to the brink. (Mint Images/Getty Images/Mint Images RF)

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.