http://blogs.law.stanford.edu/lawandbiosciences/2012/03/12/are-hospitals-gouging-the-uninsured/ Thu, 09 May 2013 20:20:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://blogs.law.stanford.edu/lawandbiosciences/2012/03/12/are-hospitals-gouging-the-uninsured/comment-page-1/#comment-19537 hgreely Sat, 17 Mar 2012 01:22:29 +0000 http://blogs.law.stanford.edu/lawandbiosciences/?p=2224#comment-19537 Fascinating case. I wonder how old the contract language is - if it is relatively recent, the result of a new version of an old document, some lawyers for Clarion may be in trouble with their client. You are shocked that the uninsured patient's bill was more than twice as high as the insurer's; I'm surprised it wasn't higher. I wonder, though, what you would do about differential pricing? Hospitals have long used it to subsidize patients who couldn't pay, a practice that continues. Would you stop insurers from driving a good deal? If you require "most favored nation" treatment for the uninsured, you surely reduce the isurer's incentives to negotiate a good rate, a rate that may give a hospital an incentive to be more efficient (or may just result in shifting costs around - or some of both). Hospital pricing is such a complex morass that making tweaks to it, though might benefit the few uninsured with enough money to tempt the hospital actually to go after payment, may be a losing strategy. Wouldn't a better solution, for this and many other things, be to get everyone insured? Fascinating case. I wonder how old the contract language is – if it is relatively recent, the result of a new version of an old document, some lawyers for Clarion may be in trouble with their client.
You are shocked that the uninsured patient’s bill was more than twice as high as the insurer’s; I’m surprised it wasn’t higher. I wonder, though, what you would do about differential pricing? Hospitals have long used it to subsidize patients who couldn’t pay, a practice that continues. Would you stop insurers from driving a good deal? If you require “most favored nation” treatment for the uninsured, you surely reduce the isurer’s incentives to negotiate a good rate, a rate that may give a hospital an incentive to be more efficient (or may just result in shifting costs around – or some of both).
Hospital pricing is such a complex morass that making tweaks to it, though might benefit the few uninsured with enough money to tempt the hospital actually to go after payment, may be a losing strategy. Wouldn’t a better solution, for this and many other things, be to get everyone insured?

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