The National Hospital Bill: The Most Expensive Conditions by Payer, 2006

Excerpt

This Statistical Brief presents data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) on the national inpatient hospital bill (aggregate community hospital charges) in 2006. This report also describes the distribution of the nation’s 2006 bill by primary payer and illustrates the conditions accounting for the largest percentage of each payer’s hospital bills. The primary payers examined are Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and the uninsured.

It should be kept in mind that hospital charges are generally more than the amount paid by payers because of negotiated discounts (the exception being the uninsured patients, who are expected to pay the full charge by many hospitals). Hospital charges are also more than the hospitals’ cost to produce the services. Nonetheless, charges can be a useful benchmark for comparing how expensive different types of hospitalizations are, such as comparisons between types of medical conditions.