Making Ends Meet

Being pregnant and uninsured is often just the beginning of a woman’s potentially long battle with the health care system. Many hospitals charge the uninsured up to five times the amount they charge a patient with insurance. Hospitals are willing to negotiate lower prices with insurance providers, but not with individuals. Medicaid sets price limits for the amount it will pay for procedures, but nobody sets limits for the amount the uninsured pay.

Costs for a regular, vaginal delivery range from $5000-$8000. Double or triple that amount and a woman who can’t afford insurance in the first place can quickly find herself unable to keep up with her bills. Several groups—from the American Hospital Association to the CBS Evening News—have chronicled the effects of hospital price gouging.

Doing the right thing isn’t a futuristic, utopian impossibility, however. Hospitals in Minnesota have agreed to charge their uninsured patients a rate which is in line with what insurance companies pay for the same services. They are also revising the way in which they collect debt. Kudos to Minnesota, but with the nation’s lowest percentage of uninsured (9.7%), they may be able to move more quickly than states that meet or exceed the national average (18.9%).

In the American Hospital Association’s “Hospital Charges Explained” they state that patients with Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance comprise 90 percent of a hospital’s charges. They say that because of the reduced pricing these agencies negotiate, most of their patients underpay for medical services. That leaves the uninsured to foot the difference. They say hospitals, after all, have to make ends meet.