November 22, 2024

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.

9 thoughts on “Who pays more of their ED bill: the uninsured, or Medicaid?

  1. 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…

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

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