50 hospitals charge uninsured more than 10 times cost of care, study finds

[muriel_volestrangler]

Fifty hospitals in the United States are charging uninsured consumers more than 10 times the actual cost of patient care, according to research published Monday.

All but one of the facilities are owned by for-profit entities and the largest number of hospitals — 20 — are in Florida. For the most part, researchers said, the hospitals with the highest markups are not in pricey neighborhoods or big cities, where the market might explain the higher prices.
...
“They are price-gouging because they can,” said Gerard Anderson, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, co-author of the study in Health Affairs. “They are marking up the prices because no one is telling them they can’t.”
...
Carepoint Health-Bayonne Med­ical Center in Bayonne, N.J., for example, also charges rates 12.6 times the actual cost of patient care. State law limits the maximum that hospitals can charge uninsured patients to 115 percent, a spokesman said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/why-some-hospitals-can-get-away-with-price-gouging-patients-study-finds/2015/06/08/b7f5118c-0aeb-11e5-9e39-0db921c47b93_story.html?hpid=z3

I can't see why the Carepoint Health-Bayonne Med­ical Center hasn't been charged with breaking the state law. Its owner says it's under 7% of patients that it's breaking the law with, and they don't really matter to the corporation.

[pnwmom]

1. This was one of the justifications of the ACA -- to put everyone beyond the reach

of the price gougers, because everyone would have pre-negotiated rates.

But it doesn't help the millions who still don't have insurance.

[procon]

2. More likely every hospital does this.

Its routine. Insurance companies negotiate for discounted,lower fees from hospitals, doctors and other ancillary providers by guaranteeing a steady supply patients. The patients are then funneled to those service providers chosen by the insurance company that carries their policy. Its a hugely profitable business all around.

If you are uninsured, or a cash patient, then you will pay the full price. I worked at a large So. Cal hospital that actively sought wealthy patients from abroad precisely because they paid the full price upfront in cash. These patients were able to do a bit of dealing to get a discount too, but it was nothing like the breaks the insurance companies got. Meanwhile, poor patients always got slammed with full price bills in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of $$$ that they had no hope of paying.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. The point is it's not 'the full price'; it's obscenely beyond it, and beyond what other hospitals do

As the article says, " a typical U.S. hospital charges 3.4 times the cost of patient care". As the paper says, the mode (ie the most typical markup) is 2.4. That seems bad enough, but this is more than 4 times that.

[B Calm]

4. K&R