Although about 16.6 percent of the U.S. population was uninsured in 2003, only 4.5 percent of the approximately 38 million hospitalizations that year - 1.7 million - were uninsured, according to HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The uninsured may be able to postpone some medical care, but when faced with a serious or life-threatening condition, hospitalization may be the only option. The charges for hospital care can be an overwhelming burden on the uninsured and when the bill is not paid, it is often shifted to insured patients in the form of higher charges. Hospital charges for uninsured patients in 2003 totaled $29 billion.
Data from AHRQ's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) also show that:
-- Half of all uninsured hospital patients were between 18 and 44 years of age, compared with one-third of privately insured and Medicaid patients in this age range.
-- Nearly 60 percent of uninsured hospital stays originated in the emergency department, compared with 31.8 percent for the privately insured and 39.3 percent for Medicaid patients.
-- About 3.5 percent of uninsured patients left the hospital against medical advice -- a rate 3 times higher than that for Medicaid patients and 7 times greater than that of privately insured patients.
-- Uninsured people in the South were the most likely to be hospitalized. Their hospitalization rate was nearly 140 times greater than that of uninsured people in the West, 65 percent higher than those in the Midwest, and 35 percent higher than those in the Northeast.
These and other data are in Uninsured Hospitalizations, 2003, HCUP Statistical Brief # 7, at hcup-us.ahrq/reports/statbriefs.jsp
The report uses statistics from HCUP's Nationwide Inpatient Sample, a database of hospital inpatient stays that is nationally representative of all short-term, non-federal hospitals. The data are drawn from hospitals that comprise 90 percent of all discharges in the United States and include all patients, regardless of insurance type as well as the uninsured.