Thursday, June 23, 2005

Boston Hospital Systems May Set Trend For Uninsured Billing 

If you have health insurance and need to go to the hospital you never pay list prices for your care. But if you are uninsured the story is quite different. Now some people are suing over this disparity.

Today, Liz Kowalczyk of the Boston Globe informs us that two of the largest of Massachusetts healthcare systems, Partners HealthCare and UMass Memorial Health Care, will discount their charges to the uninsured by 15 to 50 percent based upon patient income and the timeliness of payment and/or setting up a payment plan.

''This is kind of out there in terms of national leadership," said Susan Sherry, deputy director of Community Catalyst, a national nonprofit consumer group based in Boston that advised Partners and UMass. ''They're doing much more than hospitals in other parts of the country."
We will see if other states do the same.

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