California Hospitals Rapped On Pricing for the Poor

If you live in California and you're uninsured, you're supposed to be able to get prices for hospital procedures without a lot of hassle. And the hospitals aren't supposed to gouge you if you don't make much money.

Researchers who posed as uninsured, low-income patients found hospitals aren't complying with a law passed a few years ago to make the process of shopping for medical procedures more transparent.

After sending letters to more than 350 hospitals, only 28 percent responded, according to the study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

The California law also says hospitals can't charge low-income patients more for a procedure than what the government reimburses through a public health plan, such as Medicare. But two-thirds of the price quotes exceeded the median price that Medicare reimburses, according to the researchers from the RAND Corp., the University of Pittsburgh and Brown University.

What this shows is the difficulty in providing transparency in the screwy world of hospital pricing. The researchers found a wide range of prices for common procedures. A hysterectomy cost anywhere from $5,569 to $15,950 and a colonoscopy ranged from $216 to $1,748. California isn't alone in trying to make medical prices more transparent.More than 30 states have passed similar laws.

"Our findings raise questions about the effectiveness of California laws that are designed to help uninsured patients shop for medical care and protect themselves from being charged excessive prices," says RAND researcher Ateev Mehrotra, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.