{"id":3771,"date":"2015-06-19T19:51:02","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T19:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=3771"},"modified":"2015-06-19T19:51:08","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T19:51:08","slug":"report-hospitals-overcharging-up-to-1000-percent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=3771","title":{"rendered":"Report: Hospitals Overcharging Up to 1,000 Percent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>by Eric Galatas\/TNS<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>AUSTIN, Texas &#8211; If you\u2019re going to break a leg, try not to do it in Mesquite.<\/p>\n<p>You might end up in the ER at the Dallas Regional Medical Center, one of 50 hospitals listed with the highest price markups over actual costs in a new study published in Health Affairs.<\/p>\n<p>Ge Bai, the report\u2019s co-author and an assistant professor of accounting at Washington and Lee University, says some hospitals are marking up prices by more than 1,000 percent for the same medical services.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe hospitals are playing a price-gouging game, and this price gouging will trickle down to all consumers, whether you have insurance or not,\u201d she stresses.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3772\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3772\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3772\" src=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/gr-46653-1-1.jpg\" alt=\"A new report identifies 50 U.S. hospitals, including four in Texas, with price markups approximately 10 times their Medicare-allowable costs. Photo: Thierry Geoffroy\/Wikimedia Commons.\" width=\"600\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/gr-46653-1-1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/gr-46653-1-1-300x210.jpg 300w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/gr-46653-1-1-405x284.jpg 405w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3772\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A new report identifies 50 U.S. hospitals, including four in Texas, with price markups approximately 10 times their Medicare-allowable costs. Photo: Thierry Geoffroy\/Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The study found hospitals are charging out-of-network patients and the uninsured, as well as auto and workers\u2019 compensation insurers, more than 10 times the costs allowed by Medicare.<\/p>\n<p>Top offenders in Texas include Grand Prairie\u2019s Texas General Hospital, the Laredo Medical Center, the South Texas Health System in Edinburg, and Lake Granbury Medical Center.<\/p>\n<p>The report concludes the current pricing system charges the highest rates to the most vulnerable patients.<\/p>\n<p>Bai says since there is no regulation of hospital fees and no market forces to compel hospitals to lower costs, they charge high prices simply because they can.<\/p>\n<p>She states people can\u2019t bargain or comparative shop when they are sick.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo there\u2019s a big loophole in our hospital pricing system, and our policy makers need to understand that and step in using their policy tools to help regulate hospital pricing and control overall health care spending,\u201d she states.<\/p>\n<p>Bai says charges are unlikely to drop to levels closer to costs allowed by Medicare unless state or federal officials decide to legislate maximum markups.<\/p>\n<p>The report also found that while for-profit hospitals represent only 30 percent of all hospitals in the U.S., they account for 98 percent of hospitals with the highest markups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Eric Galatas\/TNS AUSTIN, Texas &#8211; If you\u2019re going to break a leg, try not to do it in Mesquite. You might end up in the ER at the Dallas Regional Medical Center, one of 50 hospitals listed with the highest price markups over actual costs in a new study published in Health Affairs. Ge [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3773,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771\/revisions\/3773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}