Hospital Charges YOU

Some hospitals are marking up treatments by as much as 1,000 percent, a new study finds, and the average U.S. hospital charges uninsured patients three times what Medicare allows. North Okaloosa Medical Center, Florida charges uninsured and out-of-network patients 12.6 times what Medicare allows.

Part of the problem is the Convoluted U.S. healthcare system. Medical costs can be paid by private insurance companies, directly by employers, by government-funded systems such as Medicare or Medicaid, and directly by patients. Hospitals negotiate different rates with different payers.
 

Then there is in-network and out-of-network rates. And patients often don't know until after they've received a treatment whether their insurance will pay for it, or for the doctors who delivered it.

It leads to confusion, and hospitals are taking unfair advantage of this. "Because it is difficult for patients to compare prices, market forces fail to constrain hospital charges," Bai and Anderson wrote in their report, published in the journal Health Affairs.

"These hospitals have markups (ratios of charges over Medicare-allowable costs) approximately 10 times their Medicare-allowable costs compared to a national average of 3.4," Bai and Anderson wrote.

Bai alleges certain hospitals are taking advantage of the most vulnerable patients. 
The wide variation in the charge-to-cost ratio … or why some hospitals are charging 10 times their own costs, is unknown except they CAN.

Just a thought.