Hospital Price Gouging: Florida Leads Nation, Study Says

Being hospitalized in the Sunshine State can be a rather costly proposition for the uninsured, according to a new study published in Health Affairs.

Florida leads the nation in the number of hospitals that charge uninsured patients a markup of more than 10 times the cost of care. The study focused in on the Top 50 hospitals for price markups and found that 20 of the facilities that made its list are in the Sunshine State.

At the very top of the list is North Okaloosa Medical Center in the Panhandle. That facility, researchers found, charges uninsured patients about 12.6 times the actual cost of care.

“They are price-gouging because they can,” said Gerard Anderson, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and co-author of the study, told the Washington Post. “They are marking up the prices because no one is telling them they can’t.”

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The hospitals included in the study are those with the highest markup out of the 5,000 hospitals found in the country, Anderson added. Typical hospitals charge about 3.4 times the cost of patient care, researchers pointed out.

Tampa Bay area hospitals that made the list, according to a Washington Post graphic, include:

• Bayfront Health Brooksville – 1,250 percent markup
• St. Petersburg General Hospital – 1,020 percent markup
• South Bay Hospital – 970 percent markup
• Brandon regional Hospital – 960 percent markup
• Bayfront Health Dade City – 930 percent markup

The Post noted that officials from all 50 hospitals have disputed the study’s findings, noting they do provide discounts to patients who are uninsured or underinsured.

Check out the Post’s full list here. To read the study, visit Health Affairs online.

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