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How is this costing families in some states up to $2000? Health insurance shouldn't be going up, because no insurance company is paying the debt of an uninsured person. Is the government paying the hospitals to make up for the debt of the uninsured? How is this $2000 coming from families?

The hospitals and doctors charge those who can pay more, to cover the free services, so because the bills are higher, the insurance company charges you more.

E.g., if everyone can pay, the doctor charges an average of $50 per visit. But if he has to treat some number of patients for free, than he needs to charge $55 of the patients who can pay, to keep his same income.

So if the insurance company has to shell out $55 instead of $50 per doctor visit for their insured, they will have to raise their insurance rate, to keep the same income.

The study is saying that the reason aspirin costs $5 a pill in the hospital is that many people don't pay for care, so hospitals pass along higher costs to those who can pay, ie, the insured. Health insurance companies then pass those costs along to people as premiums. So when people don't pay for their care, those who are insured pay more.

Basic things that need to happen for costs to come down:
1. More transparency in costs. Doctors, hospitals, etc. should publish exactly how much they charge for everything.
2. More people should carry catastrophic insurance, not the kind that covers everything like well-patient visits and most prescriptions. The reason drug companies and doctors charge so much is that most people are not paying full freight-- so there's no price sensitivity. Insurance should cover low probability high cost events like hospital visits, not high-probability low-cost events like doctors visits.
3. Malpractice reform. It's not as big a part of the cost structure as many people think, but it's there, and adds to costs by more tests.
4. More doctors -- the AMA artificially holds the numbers low to keep salaries up. We need more medical schools and residency slots.
5. More nurses/physicians assistants/nurse practitioners doing more things doctors used to do. Also pharmacists. All these people can diagnose most ailments, so there's no need for people to see a doctor for a sinus infection.

This is from a report by "FamiliesUSA". As it is my job to review such "reports", I can tell you to take it with a LARGE grain of salt. They are notorious for coming up with fictitious numbers and reporting them as fact.

Report found here: http://www.familiesusa.org/site/DocServer/Paying_a_Premium.pdf?docID=9241

This is how they explain it:

How Does This Happen?
How does the cost of care for the uninsured end up being passed on in the form of higher private health insurance premiums? The cost of care not otherwise directly paid for by the uninsured or by government programs or philanthropy is built into the cost base of physician and hospital revenue.Providers attempt to recover these uncompensated care dollars through various strategies; one key strategy is to negotiate higher rates for health care services paid for by private insurance. The extent to which providers can do this varies from state to state; nonetheless,the rates always reflect a significant amount of uncompensated care. Given that most health care providers are not driven to bankruptcy and our health care system survives from year to year,we can say with certainty that those with health insurance finance the residual two-thirds of the cost of care for the uninsured provided by a state's hospitals and doctors.Ironically,this increases the cost of health insurance and results in fewer people who can afford insurance;a vicious circle.

I will have to go through the report more thoroughly, and report back.