Costs of Care

Laura Cameron, then three months pregnant, tripped and fell in a parking lot and landed in the emergency room last May — her blood pressure was low and she was scared and in pain. She was flat on her back and plugged into a saline drip when a hospital employee approached her gurney to discuss how she would pay her hospital bill.

If you’re poor, uninsured and fall seriously ill, in most states if you qualify for Medicaid — but weren’t enrolled at the time — the program will pay your medical bills going back three months. It protects hospitals, too, from having to absorb the costs of caring for these patients.

Americans are spending billions of dollars each year on long-term care for older adults, and many are struggling to figure out how to pay for care for a loved one, or how to fund future care for themselves.

Jess Franz-Christensen did not realize the seriousness of her son’s Type 1 diabetes diagnosis until staff in the doctor’s office offered to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital.

Her next shock: The cost of Jack’s medicines.

Time for a pop quiz: When it comes to health care, what’s the difference between cost, charge and payment?

“Does anyone want to take a stab at it?” Sara-Megumi Naylor asks a group of first-year residents at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

This story is part of a collaboration that includes KPCC, NPR and Kaiser Health News.