the health care follies continue

As the Senate tries to decide whether to vote on an Obamacare repeal bill, the NYT profiled a new scam being perpetrated on health care consumers who have occasion to use the emergency room at a hospital.  Recently, many hospitals have signed up with a company called EM Care to staff their emergency rooms.  What neither EM Care or the hospitals have told consumers is they have not negotiated with the same insurers as the hospital uses, so they are not "in system" providers.  What this means is instead of billing the insurance companies the hospital and the unsuspecting patient deals with, the EM Care staffers bill the patient directly at whatever rate they want.  As Kevin Drum points out, this scam only works if everyone except the patient is in on it.  As a patient for an emergency appendectomy in 2001, I can tell you I wasn't thinking about who was part of my insurance network.  If EM Care was in charge of my case, I might have been on the hook for thousands of dollars of uninsured charges.  Would I have left the hospital and sought alternative care?  Not likely.    The hospitals who knowingly sign up EM Care are just as culpable as the company they are entrusting innocent lives to.