re: Study: significant increase in patients who can't afford to pay full hospital bill

Hospitals are allowed to write-off unpaid bills to "bad debt". Almost all of the bad debt theybwrite off comes from "self-pay" I.e. the uninsured. Hospitals deliberately have very high "self-pay" rates so they can write off the most bad debt possible.

So the "price" for gauze for an uninsured (self-pay) patient may be $30 but the price negotiated with BC/BS for example is probably more like $10 or $15.

This is why (in this model) it is so important to have insurance. Hospitals assume you're not going to pay if you have no insurance so they jacknip the prices.