Latinos Overcharged for Health Care, Study Says
By Alan Elsner, National Correspondent
Originally published by Reuters, June 9, 2001
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Latino patients, many of whom lack health insurance, are often overcharged when they seek medical help and harassed by debt collection agencies when they cannot pay, according to a study released on Saturday.
The report by the Consejo de Latinos Unidos, a group based in Los Angeles, analyzed the medical bills of 123 Latinos in southern California who received hospital emergency room treatment or were hospitalized in recent years.
"Hospitals in southern California, both public and private, are billing self-paying, uninsured Latinos almost five times the amount that hospitals would receive and accept as payment in full from a health maintenance organization,'' the report said.
"Hospitals, colluding with merciless billing departments and renegade collection agencies, are charging outrageous fees … while making a profit on the most vulnerable,'' it said.
Over 44 million Americans lack health insurance, one quarter of them Hispanic. In California, 40 percent of Latinos are uninsured. Previous studies have found that uninsured patients are often charged higher fees for medical services and drugs than those who have insurance and HMOs.
The report said debt collection agencies often played on the fears of Latinos regarding their legal status in the country to squeeze money out of them.
"He (the debt collector) called me and said I had until 5 p.m. that day to pay over $2,000. He said if I didn't pay, the government would take note of it when I went to get my residency papers and it would count against me,'' said Juana Pirer, one of the cases in the study.
She said the debt collector had come from the Universal Collection Agency, a Pasadena company. Company official Al Johnson declined to answer a reporter's questions about his company's methods, saying it was against company policy.
The report said Latinos who sought emergency help were often made to sign statements in English, which they did not understand, committing themselves to repay in full the costs of the services. Josefina Basulto was charged over $13,000 for a Caesarean delivery of her son, which entailed a three-day hospital stay. The debt collection agency eventually set up a payment plan that calls on her to pay off the debt in 268 payments of $40, which means she will still be paying for the birth of her son when he turns 22.
Others described how collection agents forced them to place their bills on credit cards, subject to interest rates of up to 30 percent a year.
In other cases, collection agents told patients they would destroy their credit ratings, taking away their ability in the future to buy a car or a home, unless they paid in full.
One Latino couple, Mario Sanchez and Norma Gonzalez, were involved in a traffic accident and landed with a $14,000 bill that would have been only around $1,200 for an HMO.
"I have never seen so much money as that in my life. They are taking away our dream of buying something big like a home. What are we going to do?'' said Sanchez.
In some cases, Latinos were able to negotiate discounts with hospitals if they complained. One man had his bill cut in half from $6,000 to $3,000. But, the report said, an HMO would have been charged less than $1,000 for the same services.
In other cases, hospitals were reluctant to offer detailed, itemized statements of charges and refer the bill directly to collection agencies.
