Hospitals could be forced to lower charges for the uninsured
Sen. Doug Jackson, D-Dickson, said uninsured people often are charged more than insurance companies for the same health care — sometimes by up to 800 percent.
His bill, which cleared the Senate General Welfare Committee on Wednesday, would cap charges to uninsured patients at 150 percent of the average amount charged to insurance companies.
“This bill brings some sanity to what hospitals can charge,” Jackson said.
Jackson said he found one case where an uninsured patient was charged $302 for an X-ray that only cost BlueCross BlueShield $49. In another example, an eight-day stay in a hospital cost an uninsured patient roughly $62,000, compared with the $26,291 billed to an insurance company for the same service.
He said the huge discrepancies developed as insurance companies negotiated discounts. At the same time, hospitals would jack up their base rates to help in the negotiations, Jackson said.
Uninsured patients often got stuck paying the base rate.
The Tennessee Hospital Association signed off on the bill after the cap was raised from 120 percent off the average insurance company rate to 150 percent. The group also said it is free to make the move under a recent federal ruling that Medicare regulations don’t restrict discounts offered to uninsured patients.
Mike Huggins, a lobbyist for the hospitals, said many hospitals already have instituted a sliding scale of fees based on a patient’s ability to pay.
Jackson said half of bankruptcies are caused by huge medical bills. He said the cap on what hospitals charge might make it feasible for more people to actually pay the bills.
“I’m proposing simple fairness in health care pricing,” he said. “As we enter an era without TennCare as we’ve known it, I see this as a common sense approach that balances the needs of all parties.”
The same committee also endorsed a plan to force the use of more generic drugs, which aims to reduce drug charges to TennCare, the state’s expanded Medicaid program.
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On the Net:
See Senate Bill 1903 at www.legislature.state.tn.us/