Poor patients unable to afford insurance can quite often get charged more by a physician than the physician would be paid via copay plus what the insurance company would pay.
The same applies to dentists.
This is a scandalous situation that should be rectified. We need a law that for any given procedure, a health professional may not charge uninsured persons more than the total they would receive from copay plus insurance company payment. This should correspond to the lowest fee they accept for that procedure among the insurance companies they deal with.
I know firsthand a case where an uninsured woman fell down and knocked her head unconscious. EMTs were called but by the time they arrived the woman had regained consciousness and said she did not want to be taken to an emergency room. They took her against her will and she was admitted despite her requests to be released. Subsequently a number of scans were done, despite her requests that they not be performed. A few months later she receives a bill for $2,700 from a chain I will call Radiology Pirates. They provided an itemized list of the scans and pictures. I checked the prices that my insurance would pay for the same procedures. Around $850.
So... the poor pay more !
It is really time that health professionals are forced to give up this iniquitous and inequitable practice of charging uninsured people more.