NEVADA VIEWS: Protecting Nevada patients from hospital price gouging

Going to the hospital shouldn’t feel like a game of roulette. But in Nevada — and throughout most of the country — every time you step into an emergency room, you’re spinning the wheel, gambling your financial health on the whims of the hospital’s opaque billing practices. Even when you have good insurance.

The Nevada Legislature has the opportunity to fix this broken system by passing Assembly Bill 343. This legislation, which recently passed the Assembly on a bipartisan basis, requires hospitals to publish their actual prices, including their cash and insurance rates. Armed with this information, patients can protect themselves from overcharges, choose affordable care and enjoy financial peace of mind.

Consider my story. In February, my wife was experiencing tunnel vision and a bad headache. I took her to the emergency room at Northern Nevada Medical Center. ER staff ran blood tests, performed a CT scan and gave her medication. Her physical problems subsided, but our financial problems were just beginning.

Before we left, the hospital gave us a written estimate showing the amount they would bill our insurance was $1,689, of which we owed $127 out of pocket. We were offered a 15 percent discount for paying on the spot, which we did, leaving the hospital believing we were square.

But a couple of months later, we received a bill that stunned us. The hospital had billed our insurer $19,877, of which we owed $2,388. That’s 20 times more than what we had paid and had understood the cost to be. And that’s on top of the many thousands of dollars we pay each year in insurance premiums that are supposed to protect us from such outrageous bills.

A survey of hospital reviews online show we are far from the only Nevadans dealing with such predatory medical billing practices that are ruining credit scores, wiping out savings and driving hardworking Americans into bankruptcy.

As a retired law enforcement officer with 26 years of service, I’ve spent my career protecting the public from bad actors. What happened to us — blatant price gouging — should be illegal. If any other business behaved this way — giving you a price then charging 20 times more — there would be an uproar, and it would be held accountable. Why should hospitals be exempt?

AB343 finally brings accountability to hospital billing. It simply requires hospitals to post their prices upfront — no different from any other industry. Real prices will limit hospitals’ ability to profiteer off patients by keeping them in the dark about prices. Importantly, the bill requires the publication of actual prices, not estimates, which as my story shows, don’t protect patients from overbilling.

The bill also includes a strong enforcement mechanism: It forbids hospitals that don’t obey the law from collecting on patient debt, safeguarding patients from blindsiding hospital bills. No one should be financially devastated by a hospital that hides or misrepresents its prices.

Going to the hospital shouldn’t be like stepping into a casino. You shouldn’t have to place blind bets on your health and hope the house doesn’t clean you out. By requiring real hospital price transparency, AB343 will shift the odds back in favor of patients.

Ed Rinne is a retired law enforcement officer living in Northern Nevada.