Spoiler alert: You are being ripped off by your health care and it has nothing to do with Obama or the Affordable Care Act.

Fifty hospitals in the United States are charging uninsured consumers more than 10 times the actual cost of patient care, according to research published Monday.

All but one of the facilities are owned by for-profit entities and the largest number of hospitals — 20 — are in Florida. For the most part, researchers said, the hospitals with the highest markups are not in pricey neighborhoods or big cities, where the market might explain the higher prices.

Topping the list is North Okaloosa Medical Center, a 110-bed facility in the Florida Panhandle about an hour outside of Pensacola. Uninsured patients are charged 12.6 times the actual cost of patient care.

Community Health Systems operates 25 of the hospitals on the list. Hospital Corporation of America operates 14 others.

“They are price-gouging because they can,” said Gerard Anderson, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, co-author of the study in Health Affairs. “They are marking up the prices because no one is telling them they can’t.”


There are about 5000 hospitals in America, which means that one out of a hundred is charging these ridiculous fees.

But, hey, one percent. That's not too bad, right? Not so fast.


By comparison, the researchers said, a typical U.S. hospital charges 3.4 times the cost of patient care.

When I was uninsured and trying to buy health insurance, which I was denied because of blood pressure, the agent told me that a colonoscopy that I had paid about $6,000 for out of my own savings, would have cost only about $1500 if I had insurance and before I had met my deductible. That is because the hospital that charged me $6,000 only charges the insurance company $1,500. And when you have insurance, until you meet your deductible, you still only pay what the insurance company will pay. By the way, I was working full time and had saved enough to pay for my procedure by cutting personal spending to the bone. Since I had the money in savings, not only did I have to pay the higher price, the (Catholic) hospital would not give me the discount it offered to some people. And this one expense basically wiped out my savings. Because colo-rectal cancer runs in the family and I have lost two uncles and an aunt to the disease, colonoscopies are not elective for me. Fortunately, by the time I needed another one, I had a union job -- yay! -- with benefits.

And that is only the tip of the iceberg in the absurdity that is American health care costs. This has nothing to do with quality of care --studies show that we don't rank near the top in the world, despite constant assertions by politicians that we do -- and nothing to do with socialism and political philosophy. Someone is getting rich and they are doing it off the poorest of the land, those who cannot afford insurance. Or, since the poorest often resort to tax-funded emergency room care, it is the tax-paying public who bear the burden of this overcharging practice. As long as the poorest remain uninsured and the hospitals can shift this burden to taxpayers at an exorbitant rate, why would we expect the for-profits to change?