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Hospital care for the uninsured in the United States: An analysis of national data sources

24 February 2021

In the second half of 2019, approximately 11% of civilian non-institutionalized U.S. persons (representing 35.7 million people) did not have health insurance coverage. Individuals who do not have health insurance are more likely to postpone or do without necessary medical care, which can have long-term consequences for their health. However, when uninsured individuals do receive care, it may be provided free of charge and classified as “charity care” by the healthcare entity providing the care. This report presents an in-depth analysis of financial information reported by hospitals to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). We found that hospital charity care costs for the uninsured increased approximately 20% to $19.6 billion, over the two-year period of 2016 to 2018. We also performed a deep analysis of the demographics of uninsured persons who received charity care in inpatient hospital settings and the services they received.


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