US $10.5 billion in free medical care provided by US doctors in 2013

Source: Elsevier 2014-05-19 based on an analysis of free medical data in the United States, clinicians provided physical services and charitable treatment worth about $10.5 billion to uninsured people in 2013 Teresa A Coughlin and colleagues at the Washington City Institute reported that total medical expenses of uninsured people were estimated by two methods: first, using data from the federal medical expenses Survey (MEPs) and second-hand data from published medical institutions and government sources The total cost of free health care in 2013 estimated by the above two methods is 84.9 billion US dollars and 74.9 billion US dollars respectively The difference between the two results from the fact that the second method does not include some data such as free drugs provided by some pharmaceutical companies, as well as conservative estimates of free medical expenses raised by public institutions such as the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Indian Health Service (IHS) (Health aff 2014; 33:807-14) The $10.5 billion in medical expenses provided by clinic doctors accounts for 14% of the total $74.9 billion estimated by the second method The largest share of total expenditure came from hospitals (59.5%, US $44.6 billion), followed by community funding from VA, his, local and state health departments, and automobile and housing insurance (26.4%, US $1.98 billion) The researchers point out that MEPs data cannot be used to distinguish the sources of free medical expenses, and only the second method can estimate the share of free medical expenses provided by doctors The study is part of the Caesar Medicaid and uninsured Council project