Court records, government data and patient interviews reveal that Sutter Health has a history of providing little free care to the uninsured and often victimized uninsured patients by subjecting them to a system of discriminatory pricing and aggressive collections that especially penalizes those who are least able to pay their bills.
Discriminatory Pricing
Sutter's hospital pricing system charged uninsured patients far more than what insured patients pay for the same services. In charging patients, Sutter hospitals used a "chargemaster" - a complete list of their prices for all services. Because their prices were so high, Sutter charged prices to insurance companies and other third-party payers that were merely a fraction of the prices listed on the hospitals "chargemasters." In contrast, Sutter forced uninsured patients to pay the full prices listed in its hospitals' chargemasters.
Sutter's discriminatory treatment of uninsured patients can mean that the uninsured are charged extraordinarily high prices. Government records suggest that uninsured patients at Sutter Roseville Medical Center paid prices that were 150 percent higher than prices paid by insurers. Court records indicate that Sutter's California Pacific Medical Center charged a patient almost $9.00 for a single aspirin in 2001. As yet another indicator of Sutter's discriminatory pricing system, government records indicated that Sutter's Sacramento hospitals (Sutter General and Sutter Memorial) charged prices to the uninsured that were four times higher than the cost of actually delivering those services.
Aggressive Collection Practices
Court records reveal that Sutter Health regularly sends hundreds of patients to collection when they are unable to pay their bills. Collection agencies used by Sutter aggressively pursue patients in an effort to retrieve their medical debt - sometimes going as far as garnishing a person's wages, putting liens on their homes and taking funds from patients' personal bank accounts. Sutter hospitals also authorize collection agencies to sue patients when they feel that patients have not paid back their debt in a timely manner.
Sutter sends its patients to various collection agencies including Grant & Weber, NCO Financial Systems and the Collection Bureau of San Jose (CBSJ). These collection agencies regularly charge patients an annual interest rate of 10 percent on their bills. On a hospital bill of $5,000, a 10 percent interest rate can add hundreds of dollars onto an already unmanageable debt. Along with high interest rates, collection agencies employed by Sutter typically tack on hundreds of dollars in extra fees and charges to the amount originally owed to the hospital. In the case of one San Francisco patient, Grant & Weber added $484 in interest, $194 in "costs" and $220 in attorney fees to the patient's original bill of $1665. With these additional charges, the patient's original bill grew by a phenomenal 54 percent.
In our investigation, we interviewed patients who have been victimized by Sutter Health. Their stories tell the real-life difficulties that they have faced as a result of Sutter Health’s discriminatory pricing and aggressive collection practices. Each story is unique, but collectively they convey the financial hardship, emotional strain and immense burden caused by Sutter Health’s predatory practices.
