One aspect of the uninsured crisis that often gets referenced, but rarely receives much focus, is the difference between what the insured and the uninsured pay for the same treatments. Insurance companies bargain down prices, and Medicare bargains down prices (though not on drugs), and so one way the providers eke out a bit of profit is charging higher prices to the uninsured -- prices that are then picked up by taxpayers, or converted into debt and bankruptcy. A new study found that the uninsured paid, on average, 2.5 times what the insured pay, and three times what Medicare pays. So a procedure that hospitals charge Medicare $100 for would cost the uninsured $307. And they, of course, are exactly the group that can't afford the mark-up.
Also interesting was the difference in price-gouging between non-profit and for-profit hospitals. At the non-profits, the mark-up was 249 percent what Medicare paid. At the for-profits, it was over 400 percent. That, of course, is a supremely market-efficient outcome that just goes to show the higher level of service that results when profit is included and blah blah blah.
It's hard enough being uninsured. This is unconscionable. The ultimate fix, of course, is to no longer have such a thing as an uninsured population. But in the meantime, I'll join with the libertarians to say it's time hospitals started offering some price transparency so everyone in the waiting room doesn't receive an utterly random bill.
