This article in the NY Times dances around a point in hospital pricing which always seemed upsetting to me. My understanding is that hospitals know they get slightly less than costs for Medicare, so they charge a bit more to commercial payors. But since they know bad debt comes almost primarily from the uninsured - bad debt are essentially unpaid bills that the hospital never receives compensation for - the hospital charges uninsured patients higher than either commercially or medicare insured patients.
A quick search and I came across this article in Health Affairs which argues that uninsured patients pay prices similar to those of Medicare patients in California. So what I've seen is different than what this piece of literature states.
Hospital pricing is a black box to me right now. Jeff, any thoughts on this one ? How do hospitals price, and do the uninsured pay more than the insured?
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