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Comment by lawnchair_larry | Hacker News Reader

This isn't true. They only have to provide emergency services, and they still charge for them, just not up front. If anyone did that, they would still receive bills in the mail and have derogatory information on their credit report.

Otherwise, please tell me which hospital is giving away free service to the uninsured.

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Exactly, these employees would take their children to the emergency room/urgent care. They weren't getting check-ups, but if the kid had a high fever, they would bring them in, get them seen by a doctor, then be on their way.

When asked about billing they simply said "I don't have insurance". Many hospitals, including the DSH (disproportionate share hospitals) write these things off all the time. The hospital just doesn't bother following up. Are you going to spend $200 to chase down a $100 hospital bill?

I know you're just providing a hypothetical example, but I think it's common for services provided by doctors or a hospital emergency room to cost quite a bit more than $100; in many cases an order of magnitude more. At the end of the day, I do agree that a hospital will or should make a collection decision based on a cost benefit analysis of some kind, but I think that decision will be to collect a good portion of the time.

While the bill might be $1k+, the amount collections would reasonably collect is probably more in the $100 range for what amount to doctors visits.

> The hospital just doesn't bother following up. Are you going to spend $200 to chase down a $100 hospital bill?

I think I would. Do it few times at random and get the offenders to pay $1k+, and soon people will stop scamming hospitals. For what I can tell, similar system (random ticket checks + penalties 10x the ticket price) works quite well for public transit in many cities worldwide.

Here in San Diego going to the ER without insurance costs a minimum of $1,000. I once had to do so for my son. Cost for a room was $600, a $40 shin splint cost $250, and I am not sure what else but it was pretty expensive.

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