I talked to a woman at a party who is a “health care consultant”.
(basically a MBA type who consults with hospitals)
She told me that only 3 to 7 percent of uninsured bills get paid, the rest is written off and “spread” across insured payments.
I believe that. The whole system is set up with the big payers getting discounts, even though they are now the true market. In order to have these pretended discounts, the hospitals lie in wait for that rare uninsured party who also has some net worth, and attempt to loot him mercilessly with quintuple charges and the proverbial $50 aspiring.
It's exactly this sort of predatory behavior that government is supposed to contain, but in the medical field, it not only doesn't do that, but it is the source and cause of much of it.
And that is why the big hospitals wanted Obamcare passed. They see it as a way to cover a large % of the currently uninsured so what they used to write-off will be paid for by Obamacare.
Also what many uninusred, who aren’t trying to bilk the system, may not know is there are organizations out there that will negotiate medical bills, fees et al on their behalI had a family member who was unemployed and uninsured and had to visit the ER. When he recieved his bill he called the hospital and they cut the ER bill from 1,300 to 600.
The ER physician used a third party billing organization, that was not cooperative at first. So he found an organization called Medical Cost Advocate. MCA negotiated the physician bill on his behalf and had it reduced by 60%. Their fee is 35% of the amount saved. Example the ER physician bill was 780.00 they negotiated it down to $312.00, plus their charge of 163.8 for a bill totaling 475.8 versus the original physician charge of 750.00.
Maybe pricey but now that he has an idea of the physician’s true cost/charge, the next time he visits the ER and if he is uninsured he has a starting point to where he can negotiate the bill.
Almost all uninusred can negotiate their medical bill if they are willing to take the time and make the effort. The first bill for their medical episode is not written in stone.