Minorities and uninsured are most often victims of 'price gouging', study contends By HealthDay News ...
Minorities and uninsured are most often victims of 'price gouging', study contends
By HealthDay News
Americans are routinely overcharged for emergency
room care, and minority and uninsured patients are most likely to face
this "price gouging," a new report suggests.
For the study, researchers analyzed 2013 billing records for more than 12,000 emergency medicine doctors nationwide.
On
average, adult emergency department patients were charged 340 percent
more than what Medicare pays for care ranging from stitches to a CT
scan, the investigators said.
[post_ads]"Our study found that inequality is
then further compounded on poor minority groups, who are more likely to
receive services from hospitals that charge the most," said study senior
investigator Dr. Martin Makary. He is a professor of surgery at Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Overall, charges ranged from 1 to
12.6 times ($100 to $12,600) more than what Medicare paid for services,
the study findings showed.
Emergency departments with the highest
fees were most often in for-profit hospitals in the southeastern and
midwestern United States. These facilities were also more likely to
serve higher numbers of uninsured, black and Hispanic patients, the
researchers said.
"There are massive disparities in service costs
across emergency rooms, and that price gouging is the worst for the most
vulnerable populations," Makary said in a university news release.
"This
study adds to the growing pile of evidence that to address the huge disparities in health care, health-care pricing needs to be fairer and
more transparent," he said.
The findings also show the need for legislation to protect uninsured patients, the study authors said.
According
to first author Tim Xu, "This is a health-care systems problem that
requires state and federal legislation to protect patients." Xu is a
fourth-year medical student at Johns Hopkins.
"New York has passed
a law that requires hospital and insurance companies to agree on a cost
for the care so patients are not billed egregious amounts. Patients
really have no way of protecting themselves from these pricing
practices," Xu added.
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Makary said at least seven states have
passed some form of legislation to protect uninsured patients, but he
believes national regulation is needed.
The study was published May 30 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
More information
The U.S. National Library of Medicine outlines when adults should go to the emergency department.
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