By DAVE HAGE, Star Tribune
Last update: April 7, 2009 - 2:00 PM
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What is the REAL cost of health care?
I've seen medical charges where the "billed charge" is $250 and the "network charge" is $100. The "network savings" are anywhere from … read more 40-70% There is usually a huge discrepancy between the two; I imagine it is even bigger for hospital care. I bet a number of people are like me: if they had catastrophic coverage only they'd probably be all right without normal health insurance, IF they were paying the network charge, not the billed charge. It doesn't make any sense anyway: why should people pay more when they don't have coverage? Plus, it begs the question: what is the REAL cost to the medical facility, the billed charge or the network charge?
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Nearly one in four Minnesotans went without health insurance for some period during 2007-2008, a national advocacy group said Tuesday, a sign that rising costs are putting medical coverage beyond the reach of more consumers and employers.
Minnesota, however, had the lowest uninsurance rate among the 49 states studied, continuing a long tradition of extensive private and public coverage.
Nationally, one in three non-elderly Americans, or nearly 87 million people, had no health coverage at some point in the two-year span, the study found.
"We have reached a point where almost everyone in this country has had a family member, a neighbor or a friend who is uninsured,'' said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, the Washington, D.C., advocacy group that commissioned the study.
"Premiums have been rising more than four times faster than peoples' earnings,'' Pollack added. "As premiums absorb a larger share of family budgets, people who used to take health insurance for granted are joining the ranks of the uninsured.''
Pollack said he expects the number of uninsured to rise, nationally and in Minnesota, as more people lose their jobs in the recession.
(Massachusetts, which adopted a universal-coverage system part way through the study period, was excluded.)
Pollack's group advocates for federal action to expand access to health insurance.
The numbers released Tuesday are higher than those reported by the federal government because Families USA counts everyone who went uninsured for at least one month during the two-year span. The U.S. Census Bureau counts only those who lack insurance for an entire year. By that measure the share without insurance was 15.3 percent nationally and 9.9 percent in Minnesota in 2007, the latest year available.
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