Brookwood Medical Center
Brookwood Medical Center fell at number 14 of the top 50 hospitals that price gouge patients the most.
Brookwood Medical Center is charging 10.3 times the actual cost of patient care, according to an article by The Washington Post. The hospital fell at number 14 of the top 50 hospitals that price gouge patients the most, a study by Health Affairs found.
Uninsured patients are at the highest risk of price gouging because they do not have insurance companies to negotiate prices. A lack of market competition and the difficulty for patients to compare prices are also factors that lead to overcharging, according to the article.
“They are price-gouging because they can,” Gerard Anderson, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and co-author of the study in Health Affairs, told The Washington Post. “They are marking up the prices because no one is telling them they can’t.”
Three other hospitals in Alabama were includes on the list: Stringfellow Memorial Hospital in Anniston, Riverview Regional Medical Center in Gadsden and Decatur Morgan Hospital – Parkway Campus in Decatur.
