People with health insurance may now represent the majority of debtors American hospitals struggle to collect from, according to medical billing analysts.
This marks a sea change from just a few years ago, when people with health insurance represented only about one in 10 bills hospitals considered “bad debt”, analysts said.
“We always used to consider bad debt, especially bad debt write-offs from a hospital perspective, those [patients] that have the ability to pay but don’t,” said Colleen Hall, senior vice-president for Kodiak Solutions, a billing, accounting and consulting firm that works closely with hospitals and performed the analysis.
“Now, it’s not as if these patients across the board are even able to pay, because [out-of-pocket costs are] such an astronomical amount related to what their general income might be.”
Insurance is mostly a discount program against destructively unaffordable services.
I have found private health providers for things like physical therapy often completely refuse insurance at all because medical billing is more expensive and troublesome than directly charging the clients. The demand is high enough they’re stil too busy with the clients that can afford no insurance.
Insurance in any way being a more expensive option than not having it at all is insane but our reality.
A lot of dentists also take this approach. Our dentists takes no insurance whatsoever. They were saying at the conferences they attend more and more of their peers are doing the same thing.
Angers me to think the end result is that this is the norm and employers no longer offer dental coverage at all, putting the full burden of that cost entirely on the individual.