Who pays more of their ED bill: the uninsured, or Medicaid?
Posted by GruntDoc on November 8th, 2007
Here’s one study with an answer that’s surprising, and another finding that’s not:
Govt program a strain on U.S. emergency rooms: study
Thu Nov 8, 2007 3:15pm EST
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The U.S. government’s Medicaid program for the poor may put more financial burden on overcrowded hospital emergency rooms than the nation’s 47 million uninsured, according to a study published on Thursday.
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco and Stanford University found that the uninsured patients paid 35 percent of their overall emergency room bills in 2004, versus 33 percent for Medicaid.
Wow. Read the rest for the full story of declining reimbursement from all sources, then ask why ED’s are closing.
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November 8th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
I see this everyday.
FREE=MORE, and that will always be the case.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
This is what needs to happen, until a sensible solution is found. Paying more is not the answer.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Paying less isn’t working.
November 9th, 2007 at 12:22 am
great couple of finds with these articles. when do we walk away?
November 9th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Walk away from what?
November 9th, 2007 at 1:20 am
That study is crap. Complete and utter crap. Medicare barely pays 35% of their bills, let alone unfunded or medicaid patients.
Of course, it depends what your charge master is at.
Our charge master is at about the 65%ile according to Ingenix data, and I can expect a solid $0.35 per dollar billed on Medicare patients, $0.23 per dollar billed on medicaid patients, and $0.07 per dollar on uninsured patients.
I’d like to have uninsured patients who paid 35%!
I’ll have to read the study to better critique it…
November 9th, 2007 at 9:25 am
Shadowfax is dead wrong or at least needs a new billing company. These numbers are right on for our uninsured population – and I work in a relatively ‘poor’ community. Your collections agency should be fired.
November 9th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
[...] one really need to ask, as GruntDoc suggests, “why EDs are closing”? The below-cost-reimbursement hospitals receive for the [...]
November 15th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
People who can use the “my insurance/Medicare will pay for this” excuse can rationalize that they’re not deadbeats. That’s more difficult when you don’t have anyone to shift the responsibility to.