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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:
Expenditures for the uninsured in Maryland totaled $1.47 billion in FY2002, according to an analysis conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The sum equates to $2,371 per individual without health insurance---paid for by state and federal funds, private insurance companies, physicians, charities and the uninsured themselves.
The results of the study are published in the February 2007 edition of the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.
Our study provides detailed estimates of the magnitude of the costs of having an uninsured population,' said Hugh Waters, PhD, a health economist in the Bloomberg School's Department of International Health and lead author of the study.
According to the study, the health system---including public and private health care payers, philanthropy and private physicians---spent $1.08 billion on the uninsured.
Uncompensated hospital care accounted for $227 million, which the researchers said was a conservative estimate of the percentage of charity care that goes to uninsured patients rather than insured ones and bad debt reported by hospitals.
The state government paid the largest share of expenditures, spending $334 million on the uninsured in FY2002, of which $311 million went to public health programs that provided services for uninsured individuals.
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Posted on February 14, 2007 10:37 PM
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