"...Hospitals use a mysterious billing system in which charges aren’t publicly posted – and bear no resemblance to what most patients and insurance companies wind up paying.
The bills that hospitals send patients, meanwhile, are often hard to decipher.
This lack of transparency makes it all but impossible for patients to comparison shop or to effectively question prices.
It also helps hospitals make more money...
...In the arcane world of hospital billing, the charges for most procedures far exceed what it costs to perform them.
...Hospital officials say that for most patients, charges are meaningless.
That’s because hospitals provide large discounts to private health insurers, while Medicare and Medicaid pay based on rates set by the government.
In that sense, hospital charges resemble the hotel rack rates that almost no one pays.
But here’s the rub: Some patients and insurers do get stuck paying the full charge, or something close to it.
Among them are uninsured patients who earn too much to qualify for charity care.
“It’s the conscientious working people who get screwed,”...
...At Catawba Valley Medical Center in Hickory, for instance, an uninsured patient who doesn’t qualify for charity care can get a 25 percent discount off the full charges if he or she pays immediately.
That would bring a $20,000 hospital bill down to $15,000.
But on a typical hospital stay, even that would amount to more than twice what the hospital spent to provide care.
...At most hospitals, charges are increasing rapidly.
That means bills for the uninsured – and for some other patients – are also rising fast.
...Presbyterian Hospital charged the state $204 each time it performed an EKG test on two prison inmates in 2010...
The average cost of an EKG to the hospital is less than one-eighth that amount – $23...
Higher hospital charges can also translate into higher health insurance premiums."
Charlotte Observer
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