Truckers who don’t have medical insurance have long had to contend with a problem faced by most uninsured Americans – hospitals give people with insurance discounts, while uninsured people are often charged the full price.
Thanks to the federal government, that may soon change.
Hospitals have long claimed they charge the uninsured more because federal regulations require them to. But in a letter to Richard J. Davidson, president of the American Hospital Association, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson said that’s not the case.
“That suggestion is not correct and certainly does not accurately reflect my policy,” Thompson said in the letter. “The advice you have been given regarding this issue is not consistent with my understanding of Medicare's billing rules.”
“Nothing in the Medicare program rules or regulations prohibit such discounts.”
The issue affects a significant number of truckers. In the 2001 OOIDA Member Profile Survey, 26 percent of those responding said they had no medical insurance coverage, John Siebert of the OOIDA Foundation said. That’s far higher than the 15 percent of the overall U.S. population that lacks health coverage, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Thompson directed the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of Inspector General to prepare summaries of his department’s policy, which he said showed hospitals can provide discounts to uninsured and underinsured patients who cannot afford their hospital bills, as well as to people on Medicare who cannot afford their cost-sharing obligations under the program.
Up till now, hospitals limited the number of uninsured patients because of their perception that a "string of barriers that discourage hospitals from reducing charges to the uninsured,” Davidson said in a December letter to Thompson. In that letter, quoted by USA Today, Davidson said hospitals hesitate in part out of a fear of federal prosecution.
--by Mark H. Reddig, associate editor
Mark Reddig can be reached at mark_reddig@landlinemag.com.
