New Jersey leads the country with the highest charges for health care services. According to the below article, charges by hospitals in New Jersey are four times higher than the actual cost. This a serious matter and New Jersey hospitals are not alone in the practice of pricing procedures based on inflated charges that they assert are a reflection of the market. Read the examples in the article and take warning; if you use a non-participating hospital, or are uninsured or have hospital out-of-pocket expenses – never pay the full charge! Medical Cost Advocate may be able to assist you by negotiating your claim and reducing your bill.
Star-Ledger – Trenton Bureau
The pain in Dan Abrams’ leg throbbed so much he could barely stand.
Still, the 60-year-old Somerville resident, who friends say had just canceled his health insurance because of the tough economy, debated from a hospital emergency room whether he should stay and run up thousands of dollars in debt, or take antibiotics from home and hope they arrested the mysterious infection in his leg.
Fearing he could lose his home and flooring business, Abrams chose to leave Somerset Medical Center after a hospital physician said staying would “run him a lot of money,” said Connie Dodd, a close friend who drove him to the hospital and heard the conversation. “I begged him to stay. But Dan’s a proud man. Talk of all the bills got him scared.”
When Connie and her partner, Cindy Weiss, brought Abrams dinner the next night, July 29, they found his lifeless body in bed. Weiss performed CPR but it was too late. “It was a nightmare,” Dodd said.
For people without health insurance, few things are more intimidating than the arrival of a hospital bill.
Nowhere is the sticker shock worse in the country than in New Jersey, according to health experts and a new report by the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, a prominent health care policy group based in Trenton.
New Jersey’s hospital “charges” the price list used to negotiate the cost of a bill for the uninsured and for insured people who use a hospital outside their network are four times higher than the actual cost of treating a patient.
For thousands, the charges mean astronomical bills after a hospital stay. Insurers contend they also force higher premiums for anyone with health insurance.