Can I Go To The Hospital Without Insurance – What Happens If You Do

If you go to the hospital and end up in the emergency room without having health insurance, then any medical professional or doctor available is required to give you treatment just like he would with every other patient.

It is done on the grounds of the Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act, which mandates medical professionals to attend to any individual with an emergency whether they have insurance coverage or not. So can I go to the hospital without insurance, and what happens if you do is what people want answers for.

Going to the hospital without having insurance doesn’t stop you from getting the attention you need from a medical professional or doctor. But at the end of the day, you would end up getting billed for all of the medical bills, and these bills might include medical costs, hospital costs, doctor’s fees, specialist payment, and more.

Having no insurer to help with absorbing some if not all of these bills means the amount you would have to pay will be very high.

Can I Go To The Hospital Without Insurance

Having insurance and visiting the hospital simply means that your health insurance plan would cover some of the medical services you have received upon visiting the hospital. At the same time, you would pay the rest of the bill either through the deductible, co-insurance, or co-payment.

These are actually the amount you pay pending when your insurance kicks off. Having no coverage means you are responsible for the entire bill either from the hospital or from the doctor who accepted to treat you.

If your case isn’t an emergency, then it would be a great idea for you to find out about the cost of treatment before proceeding, and this is because the cost of treatment may vary. It is wise checking for the cost of treatment remains the best option that you have.

In some hospitals, patients who do not have insurance are sometimes given discounts or are allowed to negotiate payments to meet up with the payment over a period of time. In some cases, hospital bills that are negotiated can be paid in months.

Before you get hospitalized, you must negotiate the hospital’s bills if you do not have insurance coverage, and this also applies when you want to have a child or when you want to undergo surgery.

In other cases, you can also ask for the hospital’s payment department, where you can request financial assistance. It is sometimes referred to as “charity care,” and it helps adjust an uninsured patient’s bills so they can meet up with medical bills.

Through some state laws, non-profit hospitals are mandated to provide uninsured patients with assistance. In hospitals, they would prefer working out a payment method with uninsured patients, even if it means getting at least fifty percent of what they billed the patient.

In so many other cases, individual doctors would prefer to work with some patients who can’t afford insurance. Even though policies may vary from one doctor to another, they might cut the bills in half so patients might meet up with payment.

Visiting An Urgent Care Center

If your case isn’t a true emergency, then visiting an urgent care center might be the best option that you have. Urgent care professionals such as medical professionals help attend to injuries and illnesses of minor nature. If you needed emergency treatment, you would get referred to the emergency room or ER.

The cost of a visit to an urgent care center is about half the price you would pay if you visit the hospital, and visiting the hospital means paying for lab fees, doctor fees, prescription fees, and more.

However, we want you to know about visiting the urgent care center because you would have to pay some amount of money upfront, which is if you do not have insurance coverage.

During the open enrollment period, you should sign up for health insurance if you do not have one, and this is the best that you can offer yourself because it is the best way to avoid paying the entire bills when you pay a visit to the hospital.

One more thing is having medical or health insurance is also another way of maintaining financial security.