HealthDay News — According to a research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, many doctors bill their private-paying patients up to 6 times more than what Medicare pays for the same services.
Gerard Anderson, PhD, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and Ge Bai, CPA, PhD, of the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins, examined physician charges by 429,273 physicians across 54 medical specialties nationwide.
The authors then compared charges with the rates Medicare considers reasonable.
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Overall, half the charges were at least 2.5 times higher than what Medicare pays, according to the analysis. General practice physicians had the lowest markup, at 1.6 times the Medicare rate.
Of the 10,730 physicians who were the top 2.5% with “high excess charges,” 55% were anesthesiologists. Only 3% were in general practice, internal medicine or family practice.
One-third of physicians with high markups practiced in 10 regions of the country where patients are often referred for major surgical procedures. These included New York City, Houston, Los Angeles and Atlanta.
“High excess charges can impose financial burdens on uninsured patients and privately insured patients using out-of-network physicians,” the authors write. “Although some out-of-network physicians may offer discounts from their full charges, many patients receive unexpected medical bills.”
Reference
Bai G, Anderson GF. “Variation in the Ratio of Physician Charges to Medicare Payments by Specialty and Region.” JAMA. 2017;317(3):315-318. doi:10.1001/jama.2016.16230
