I've found the numbers I was looking for

Posted by Kromey at 8:08pm Apr 5 '10
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So we all know by now that the health care bill has passed. One of the big talking points from the left, and justification for the individual mandate, is the added burden foisted onto everyone who can pay to cover the cost of ER visits for those who can't pay. I asked for specific numbers, and no one wanted to play ball, instead happily repeating a talking point without bothering to back it up with actual facts.

Well, I've got the numbers.

Percentage of ER visitors who cannot pay: 17%
Average cost of an ER visit: $707

Both of those numbers seem pretty low, but you have to keep in mind some important factors:
1) People who know they're covered will make use of such services more often than those who fear receiving bills they can't pay.
2) There are a lot of hypochondriacs and other people who freak out at the slightest scrape in this country - they might be using the ER for things others might consider trivial or minor.
3) Parents, who are the most likely to be covered for fear of not being able to provide care for their children, are notorious for freaking out over every little cough, resulting in frequent but inexpensive ER visits.
etc.

So with those numbers in mind, let's crunch them and find out how much the average ER visit costs to cover those who can't pay. We'll assume that the hospital is unwilling to suffer a dock to their profits, and thus they are passing along the entirety of the billed amount and not merely what it cost them (I suspect that many hospitals would only pass along the cost to them, while others -- especially not-for-profit hospitals -- might just soak up the entire thing as a loss, however we'll just gloss over that). It seems reasonable that the $707 average cost per ER visit is already hiked to account for those who can't pay, so we'll make that assumption as well.

So we end up with 17% of that $707 ($120.19) being the "surcharge" the rest of us pay to cover those who can't; the remaining 83% ($586.81) is what we actually owe for services rendered.

(Check my math: for every 100 patients, 83 can pay while 17 cannot; 83 patients paying $707 means $58,681 paid. If everyone could pay and my math above is correct, that would instead be 100 patients paying $586.81 each, for a total of $58,681 paid. They match - the hospital hasn't lost one single penny in income.)

Now, the one caveat to these numbers is that the $707 figure is the average for all ER visits, not merely ER visits that couldn't be paid for. It's easy to imagine an uninsured person coming up with $700 to pay for an ER visit out-of-pocket, and likewise it's easy to imagine that someone who knows they'll be paying out of pocket is less likely to go to the ER unless it's truly an emergency - ergo, it seems reasonable that the average cost for an unpaid-for ER visit would be higher than the overall average for all ER visits. I couldn't find that number, however.

Source for the numbers I did find is a Reader's Digest issue, attributed to an assortment of paramedics, ER nurses/doctors, and professors specializing in medicine and health care. If you don't like my numbers, or don't like my source, then do the legwork yourself and find some "good" numbers to refute mine. I asked repeatedly for the facts to back up this talking point, and I was repeatedly ignored - now that I've done your work for you, I'm not at all interested in being told that I suck or that I didn't do a good enough job. If you want to recite talking points, you should back them up with facts, lest you sound like Guiliani ("There was not a single terrorist attack on American soil under Bush"). (Yes, this final point is combative - it's because I'm already annoyed with the hypocrisy: cries that the right's talking points be backed up with facts and then ignoring calls to likewise back up the left's talking points with facts. If you're asserting something as fact, you should actually have the facts to back that up, and be able to provide them when asked.)
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