To the editor:

The article in the March 8 Journal-World on uncollected bills at Lawrence Memorial Hospital interested me greatly. During the past six years I have received bills for more than $200,000 from not-for-profit hospital/medical centers for my wife’s medical care. However, my insurance company generally paid the hospital/medical centers less than one-third of the bills that initially had been sent to me.

Are the shortages given in the article calculated on the basis of the bills initially sent to former patients or their guardians or on the approximate amounts the hospital would have received if insurance companies had paid the bill?

Financially, how can not-for-profit hospital/medical centers survive when they settle with insurance companies for far less than the bills initially sent to the people responsible for them? (I am assuming that most income for hospital/medical centers comes from insurance companies.) Morally, how can not-for-profit hospital/medical centers send bills to their uninsured patients that are far more than the amount they know they would receive from insurance companies?

Jim Sylwester,

Lawrence