Ballooning bills - More U.S. hospitals pushing patients to pay before care
Safi Bello
Reuters ------- Last year, the Henry County Health Center in Iowa started providing patients with a cost estimate along with pre-surgery medical advice. The 25-bed rural hospital in the southwest corner of the state implemented the protocol because of mounting unpaid bills from insured patients, a group that had previously not raised red flags. Henry County is one of hundreds of U.S. hospitals trying to cope with an unexpected consequence of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, known as Obamacare: millions more Americans have health insurance, but it requires them to spend thousands of dollars before their insurer kicks in a dime. To get more in depth information click on the picture below to read the article.