So what if you don't have insurance?

At the Tea Party protest this week outside Senator Claire McCaskill's office, ACORN demonstrators were trying to give us the impression that a lack of health insurance equals a lack of health care. This didn't jive with what I know. So I decided to do a little investigation.

Missouri Baptist Hospital in St. Louis has an excellent maternity ward. My wife and I have delivered all three of our children there, all paid for (mostly) with insurance coverage. We could not have been happier with the care we received. So what kind of care would we have gotten if we didn't have insurance?

I talked with a postpartum nurse who works at MoBap. She told me that roughly 10% of her patients are "private-pay" - meaning they come to the hospital without insurance coverage. I asked if she had instructions to treat these patients any differently than her patients with insurance. "Absolutely not," she said, "they get the exact same care as everyone else."

MoBap is very good about working with the uninsured. An insured patient typically incurs about $8000 in charges for a c-section delivery with a 4 day in-hospital recovery. But they offer drastically discounted pricing for private-pay clients. The same c-section might cost an uninsured patient only about $2500 (prices are approximate - I couldn't reach a billing representative at MoBap to confirm.)

I realize that $2500 is still a lot of money for a low-income family. But that price is just their "package" deal for the uninsured. They also offer other financial assistance.

From MoBap's website:

Every year BJC HealthCare provides more than $100 million in free care for uninsured patients....

I have firsthand knowledge of their largesse. After our second daughter was born, among all the confusion and sleep deprivation, we overlooked adding our daughter to my wife's policy within time to get the postpartum care covered. And then my wife quit her job and switched to my policy. We were left holding a $900 bill for 3 days stay in the hospital - and with only one income earner, we were strapped to cover it. MoBap worked with us - reducing the bill and giving us plenty of time to pay it off. No threats, no collection warnings.

And MoBap isn't the only hospital that offers top notch care for people who fall into the crack between insurance and Medicare/Medicaid. Most hospitals fund or otherwise support free clinics in urban and rural poor areas. And of course, no hospital can turn away a patient for emergency care for lack of ability to pay. Maybe not a utopian system, but still, the best in the world. And yes, if you don't have insurance, healthcare providers often offer steep discounts.

During a time when my mother was without health insurance, her doctor wanted her to get an MRI for a knee problem. The imaging company provided her with an MRI for $350. If billed to an insurance company, that same MRI would have cost about $2000. All my mom needed to do was ask. The help was there. No government forms to fill out. No bureaucrat sticking his nose into her file to determine whether the MRI was necessary.

Now don't get me wrong, these stories of quality care being provided to people without insurance are in no way intended as an indictment of private health insurance. I relate them only to put lie to the ACORN rally chant that lack of insurance equals no access to care. Any reform to our health care system should include a plan to encourage people (not force them) to carry insurance. It should also allow doctors, health care providers and insurance companies to profit from the services they provide in a way that encourages competition as the primary mechanism to controlling costs. Our current health care system built largely on private health insurance isn't perfect, but it's the best in the world.

So what of these ACORN agitators chanting "HEALTHCARE NOW!" - trying to leave the impression that without government intervention the best medical treatment in the world is behind locked doors? Perhaps they are just misinformed. Or perhaps they have another - unspoken - agenda.

NEXT: I interview a Canadian living in the U.S. and get his opinions on the contrast between our free market system and socialized medicine.