Hospitals that are committed to serving the poor are benefiting from the larger number of Americans who have health insurance as a result of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. And those in states that also decided to expand Medicaid are really enjoying a boom.

The Kaiser Family Foundation came to this conclusion after reviewing financial results from a major hospital system that operates hospitals in expansion and non-expansion states. It's case study: Ascension Health, the provider subsidiary of the nation's largest not-for-profit health system.

The company operates 131 acute care hospitals as well as other health care delivery facilities in 23 states, and provides, according to Kaiser, "almost $1.8 billion in care to persons living in poverty and other community benefit programs that include $600 million in direct charity care assistance to poor and uninsured patients in their 2014 fiscal year."