Uninsured Hospital Stays Surged Over Five-Year Period

When a patient without health insurance is admitted to the hospital, the results can be catastrophic for the patient's finances. And unfortunately, uninsured hospital stays jumped 21 percent between 2003 and 2008.

The latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a federal agency, found that all hospital stays grew only four percent during the same period, meaning you were more likely to be admitted to the hospital if you didn't have insurance.

Average stay cost $7,300

The report found that there were 2.1 million uninsured admissions in 2008, compared to 1.8 million in both 2003 and 1998. The average cost of a 2008 uninsured hospital stay was $7,300.

In some cases, a hospital might "reprice" the cost of the hospital bill, shifting some of the costs to insured patience. In many cases, however, the resulting bill was staggering enough to push the uninsured patient into bankruptcy.

A 2009 study by the American Journal of Medicine found that nearly 60 percent of 2007 bankruptcies stemmed from medical bills.

Public hospitals get most uninsured patients

The AHRQ report also found that public hospitals saw the greatest share of uninsured stays (8.3 percent) in 2008, compared to private, for-profit hospital stays with 5.5 percent, and private, stays in not-for-profit hospitals with 4.7 percent. Hospitals in the South had more than twice as many uninsured stays (7.6 percent) than those in the Northeast (3.2 percent) in 2008.

As you might expect, when an uninsured patient entered a hospital, it was usually to deal with a fairly serious condition. Between 2003- 2008, the number of uninsured hospital stays increased by 55 percent for skin infections, 43 percent for gall bladder disease, 40 percent for diabetes complications, 35 percent for alcohol-related disorders, and 20 percent for heart attacks.