Charging paying patients more to cover the cost of patients who don't pay

[PlanetaryOrbit]

Hospitals should be banned from charging paying patients more to cover the cost of patients who don't pay.

If a restaurant charged a patron double price for a burger because the previous customer didn't pay his burger, he would throw a fit, and rightfully so. Yes, I know, fast food isn't the best analogy, but you get my point.


It is a ludicrous injustice.

[WillowTree]

1. Restaurants do charge the paying patrons more to cover the ones who skip out on their bills.

And stores charge paying customers more to defray the expenses they incur from shoplifters. That's just the way it works virtually everywhere. You're deluding yourself if you think it's otherwise.

[PlanetaryOrbit]

3. That shouldn't be allowed either. n/t.

[CreekDog]

11. if 5% of my merchandise gets shoplifted, i can't raise my prices 5%?

but you're saying i can raise the prices for any other reason whatsoever?

this is a confusing and confused position.

[Glassunion]

17. +1 Indeed.

quite a confusing position.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

5. Skipping on the bill and shoplifting are also criminal acts that get people sent to jail. nt

[NYC_SKP]

2. Agree. We need single payer. NT

[dembotoz]

4. bad debt is a cost for any business

sometimes it is substantial

[liberalhistorian]

8. Health care should not be a

profit-driven business, period. And it is not, in every other industrialized, developed country.

[NCTraveler]

6. Everywhere you go in life you are paying more because some don't pay at all.

It is the way it works and is normally fair. It is not equitable in health care which should be a right. The solution to the problem is single payer. Ohhh, and never shopping again as this goes on with everything you purchase.

[liberalhistorian]

7. You need to substitute "can't" for "don't", because

that's the appropriate word in the vast majority of cases. And the restaurant analogy doesn't work because people CHOOSE to go to restaurants, and it is not necessary for survival, but they usually don't voluntarily choose to have a major illness, injury or accident or otherwise need access to medical care and such care often IS necessary to survival.

The horrendous charges for even the simplest care, the refusal of care to those who don't have the right insurance or enough money, and the stranglehold the for-profit insurance and medical industrial complex has on our health care, and the tens of thousands (if not likely more) of deaths and disabilities each year that are a direct result of being uninsured or not having the money for care is the REAL injustice. If my having to pay more means that those who don't have insurance or money for care receive care, then I have NO problem with that at all.

This whole money-and-profit-driven health care system that puts profits before people MUST come to an end.

[gollygee]

9. Hospitals (maybe just many or most?) can't turn away people regardless of ability to pay

but those costs are built into the cost of business, just like any other business has their expenses built into the costs of their business. Shoplifting? You pay for it. Food that doesn't get sold before the expiration date and has to be thrown out? You pay for it.

If you're really upset about it, I assume you are a huge proponent of a single payer socialized medical system.

[NYC_SKP]

10. SMH at some of the replies. Sad that people don't understand the realities.

True, your analogy is too simplistic, but the principles involved apply in some ways.

Restaurants are for profit, not all HC providers are and they really shouldn't be, none of them.

And, a restaurant can track down and sue a person who writes a bad check, but hospitals have to take patients, in most cases.

Third, hospitals might charge patients and their insurers vastly different amounts for the same service depending on coverage details, which is like having a different price for every diner as they walk into your restaurant.

So, I agree with you that it's wrong.

And I SMH that some replies seem to be saying, "eh, get over it."

It's so simple, we need to do what Switzerland and Sweden do for Health Care.

?la=en

[WestCoastLib]

12. That's the way everything works

I can't agree with your premise. This is the way things work, and the way things should work. Now we can debate the costs of Healthcare and whether or not we should go Single Payer, but we (the collective we) will always pay for those that don't, in every aspect of life.

A business makes operates with a budget to cover costs. Theft (or failure to pay) is a cost on their budget. They are still paying the doctors, nurses and surgeons for the time that they treated these people.

Your car insurance goes up the more people that total their cars.

Your grocery prices go up if people steal from their store.

Honestly, this reality is what makes conservative policies so stupid. They are against paying taxes to help other people, but all those costs from taxes we don't pay are going to end up coming out of our pockets eventually in other ways anyway.

Don't want to pay taxes for quality education? Fine, watch the crime rate go up and less educated people resort to other means to make end meet. And watch your home insurance go up, the amount you pay at stores go up, the costs we pay for incarceration go up, etc.

There's pretty much no aspect of life in which this dynamic that you are upset about doesn't play out.

[dilby]

13. Hospital can either charge paying customer more, go out of business or deny the poor healthcare.

If a burger joint had to accept every patron whether they had the means to pay or not then I can guarantee the price of the burger would be double. Hospitals are no different, if someone has no method of paying the bill I don't think they should be denied healthcare, yes we could lower the cost of healthcare if we only allowed people who had money get it but I think everyone deserves treatment no matter their income bracket.

[drray23]

14. but consider this.

It is not a simple case of one to one pay for services. The whole premise of insurance, including healthcare is to spread the load over everybody. That is why we live in society. We derive benefits from such and hence we pay for it. I dolt not mind if I pay more so that people we can not pay get care. First, its the right thing to do from a compassionate point of view, it also makes sense economically. If everybody gets care, the society as a whole works better.
As far as restaurant goes, maybe it does not work like your analogy but its not far off the mark. The cost of that burger include incidentals such as factoring the amount of food waste (customers refusing a dish for whatever reason), lost silverware, broken plates, etc.. So yes, you do end up paying for others in your burger.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

15. no, what is ludicrous is that healthcare is not considered a fundamental human right in this country

[Glassunion]

16. Not the best analogy at all.

But businesses do indeed charge you for a whole myriad of things that you did not buy.

Example: A sandwich on a menu in a deli is priced at $3.99. Inside of the cost of that sandwich, you have of course the product ingredients, the labor of it's delivery and production, the utility costs of water, natural gas, refrigeration, etc... Then on top of that, you are paying for spoils and theft that other folks caused. Then, even though you are paying in cash, you will still be charged to cover the cost of credit card fees that the deli has to pay to the credit card companies.

Your not going to double the cost for one single customer, you are going to spread it across your entire customer base.

[daredtowork]

18. I suspect sometimes hospitals just say that

Just like your phone bill is padded with charges supposedly "imposed" by the government, but which actually go to pay the bloated telecommunications bureaucracy. Sure, some of the charges do go toward passing along government taxes and fees, but "the government" is also a convenient bad guy to blame while you inflate those fees.

Now there is a problem with individual hospitals being burdened with the costs of individual patients that can't pay. I was under the impression this was a problem the Affordable Care Act was supposed to address: but perhaps you are from a state where your Governor screwed his constituents by refusing to sign on.

The underlying problem with health care is the same as with welfare: fragmentation and inequitable cost-sharing. One of the drivers of the problem is the schadenfreude invocation of State's rights. It's schadenfreude because the tacit political intent is to treat the problem "competitively", i.e. drive the people who "cost" more to another State. While States secretly play those games, real people suffer.

Some things just have to be done as a matter of national infrastructure so States won't busily try to offload problems onto each other. This is the problem with minimum wage. This is the problem with welfare. This is the problem with health care mentioned above. That hospital would not have a pretext to charge patients for "other patients" at that particular hospital if costs were spread more evenly.

If we have single-payer, we still have to deal with the ability people to pay into the system: that means dealing with unemployment and creating more ladders out of welfare and opening up opportunities for people with disabilities instead of creating this parallel world of SSI poverty.

[KitSileya]

19. You know what?

I live in a country with universal health care, and I have absolutely no problems paying that extra bit of tax that goes to pay for the drug addict in the bed next to mine in the emergency ward. I know that my country taxes those in my income bracket more because we can afford more, and I don't mind if it saves people's lives. Read that again. I do not mind paying if it gives other people decent lives.

Why?

Because I am a liberal, because I am a progressive, because I am a human being - because I believe those other people are human beings too, and they deserve to get health care simply because they are human beings, not only if they can pay for it. It's common decency, and if you don't think those with plenty should help those with little, or nothing, you can be darn sure I judge you. I judge you hard.

[onethatcares]

20. the part I don't like is

having some guy in a suit tack on an extra 33% to the burger just because they can, which is exactly what the insurance industry does.

they add nothing to the outcome of healthcare except an extra cost..