School of Policy, Planning, and Development, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Health Aff (Millwood). 2013 Jun;32(6):1101-8. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2012.0731.
Millions of uninsured Americans rely on hospital emergency departments (EDs) for medical care. Throughout the United States, uninsured patients treated in or admitted to the hospital through the ED receive hospital bills based on what hospitals call "billed charges." These charges are much higher than those paid by insured patients. In 2006 California approved "fair pricing" legislation to protect uninsured patients from having to pay full billed charges. We found that by 2011 most California hospitals had responded to the law by adopting financial assistance policies to make care more affordable for the state's 6.8 million uninsured people. Ninety-seven percent of California hospitals reported that they offered free care to uninsured patients with incomes at or below 100 percent of the federal poverty level. California's approach offers a promising policy option to other states seeking to protect the uninsured from receiving bills based on full billed charges.
数以百万计的没有保险的美国人依赖医院急诊部（ED）获得医疗服务。在美国各地，通过 ED 治疗或入院的未参保患者会收到医院根据所谓的“计费收费”开出的医院账单。这些收费比有保险的患者支付的费用高得多。2006 年，加利福尼亚州批准了“公平定价”立法，以保护未参保患者不必支付全额计费收费。我们发现，到 2011 年，大多数加利福尼亚州的医院已经通过采用经济援助政策来应对该法律，以使该州 680 万无保险的人能够负担得起护理费用。97%的加州医院报告称，他们为收入在联邦贫困线 100%及以下的无保险患者提供免费护理。加利福尼亚州的做法为其他寻求保护未参保者免受全额计费收费账单影响的州提供了一个有前途的政策选择。
