- MONDAY, Aug. 25 (HealthDay News) — Uninsured Americans will
spend $30 billion out of pocket for health care, and receive $56 billion
in uncompensated care in 2008, new research shows.

Uncompensated care is defined as health care that is received but not
paid for by the uninsured or a health insurer.

In a report appearing in Monday's online edition of Health
Affairs, Jack Hadley, of George Mason University, and John Holahan,
Teresa Coughlin and Dawn Miller, of the Urban Institute, analyzed data on
medical spending in people who are insured versus those who are
uninsured.

They found that people uninsured for any part of 2008 receive about
half as much care as those who are fully insured. A person who is
uninsured all year will average $1,686 in medical costs, while someone who
is privately insured will average $3,915.

And, the researchers pointed out, the uninsured pay an average of $583
(35 percent) of their costs, while the insured pay an average of $681 (17
percent).

“The uninsured receive a lot less care than the insured, and they pay a
greater percentage of it out of pocket. Contrary to popular myth, they are
not all free riders,” study author Hadley, a senior health services
researcher at George Mason, said in a news release from the journal.

The researchers also estimated that the federal government pays for
about three-quarters ($43 billion) of the uncompensated care bill,
including roughly $18 billion in special payments to hospitals by Medicare
and Medicaid; $15 billion in tax appropriations and indigent care programs
by state and local governments; and almost $10 billion in spending by the
Veterans Health Administration, the Indian Health Service, community
health centers and similar direct-care programs.

Finally, the researchers estimated that if all people uninsured for all
or part of 2008 were to gain health-care coverage, the uninsured would
increase their medical spending by $122.6 billion — an amount equal to
about 5 percent of current health spending.

“From society's perspective, covering the uninsured is still a good
investment. Failure to act in the near term will only make it more
expensive to cover the uninsured in the future, while adding to the amount
of lost productivity from not insuring all Americans,” Hadley said.

More information

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has more about health
insurance.