Hospitals often charge uninsured patients more than insurers for same services

Becker's Healthcare July 6, 2021
Katie Adams

Hospitals consistently bill uninsured and other cash-paying patients at their highest rates while giving discounts to insurers, The Wall Street Journal reported July 6.

Hospital billing data was confidential until Jan. 1, when CMS’ price disclosure rule took effect. The rule requires hospitals to post a machine-readable file with the negotiated rates for all items and services and display the prices of 300 shoppable services in a consumer-friendly format.

Now that rates are publicly available, researchers can compare insurance and cash-payment charges. The Journal used data compiled by price transparency startup Turquoise Health for its investigation. The Turquoise dataset comprised 1,550 hospitals that released both insurance and cash-payment rates.

The investigation examined hospitals’ price disclosures for 17 services identified...

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