This is absolutely not true! And if any hospital or clinic ever does it, that is against the law, so report them to the Federal Medicare program immediately!
There is a huge misnomer out there that hospitals charge different amounts to different people. They can not do that, unless they are not contracted Medicare providers. There is in the law, that every person must be charged the same amount. Where the confusion is, is that although they may not bill different amounts, they can collect different amounts.
If they accept Medicare, they have to accept Medicares fees. They also have the ability to negotiate fees with other insurances. So the end result is that the self pay patient is probably the only one that pays the full amount. The rest is written off.
I encourage every patient that has no insurance to go into the billing office of their physician or hospital, and ask if they would be willing to take the Medicare rate for their bill. Many places will, or at least will be willing to offer some other discount.
The dirty little secret is that the Federal government has made it illegal for the hospital to offer these deals without having the patient request it. You must ask for the help, because they can't give it without being asked, and documenting a "need" on the patients part. Starks laws dictate that a provider can not do anything to "entice" a patient to use their services, and one of the "enticements" is they can not offer to discount, or even write off a bill without being asked!
It's not a misnomer, it is a fact! Last year I had simple outpatient procedure (in and out in less than 2 hours) for which the hospital sent a totally ridiculous bill of $2,500 to the insurance company. This did not include any of the doctors fees, anesthesia, pathology, etc. That was all billed seperatly. The $2,500 was for the use of a room, a set of sheets and I suppose the glass of juice they gave me afterwords.
The insurance company initially rejected payment because the idiots at the hospital put the wrong procedure number on the the bill. After the rejection, the hospital then sent me a bill for $1,250 at a 50% discounted "uninsured" rate.
After many months back and forth with the clinically brain dead hospital billing personnel, they finally resubmitted the entire $2,500 bill to the insurance company with the proper billing code and the insurance company promptly paid them a grand total of $850 which they accepted as payment in full. End of story.
Now here we have three pricing levels for a simple hospital visit.
1. The $2,500 List Price or Rack Rate which they NEVER get.
2. The 'Retail' price of $1,250 they will attempt to collect from the uninsured.
3. The 'Wholesale' price of $850 that is pre negotiated with the insurance company.