Grassley to hospitals: Explain why you’re suing low-income patients

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

Sen. Charles Grassley is calling out nonprofit hospitals who are suing poor patients over unpaid bills and says they could be breaking the law, according to a report by ProPublica and NPR.

 

Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter, dated January 16, 2015, to Heartland Regional Medical Center, a nonprofit hospital in St. Joseph, Mo., that has garnished the wages of low-income patients who were unable to pay their medical bills.

 

Citing the ProPublica and NPR report, Grassley said the hospital, which recently changed its name to Mosaic Life Care, had stretched the law to the breaking point. Grassley wrote that the hospital, “may not be meeting the requirements to be a nonprofit, tax-exempt hospital."

 

Grassley also asked questions about the hospital’s treatment of lower-income patients, the process by which it collects debts and how it administers financial assistance.

 

"Reports detail a number of instances where Mosaic failed to identify patients who would qualify for financial assistance and who have since been subject to abusive billing and collection practices," Grassley wrote. "The practices appear to be extremely punitive and unfair to both low-income patients and taxpayers who subsidize charitable hospitals' tax breaks."

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Bad medicine?