Hospitals and others have come together to pay for the medical costs
Many of the Colorado movie theatre shooting victims do not have health insurance or are not adequately insured to cover all of the medical expenses that accumulated as a result of this tragedy.
The hospitals have stepped up and are lifting the financial burden from these patients.
The Children’s Hospital of Colorado has announced that their charity care program and donations will be used for covering the medical costs of the victims who are not covered by health insurance.
Victims with health insurance won’t need to pay their deductibles or co-pays.
The hospital has also announced that those additional out of pocket expenses will also be waived for shooting victim patients with health insurance. According to a statement by Children’s Hospital Colorado spokesperson, Elizabeth Whitehead, “We are committed to supporting these families as they heal.”
The HealthONE system is also making efforts to ease the medical costs faced by victims with and without health insurance. This is the healthcare system that includes the Swedish Medical Center and the Medical Center of Aurora, both of which are treating patients who were victims of the shooting at the movie theatre.
HealthONE has stated that it will be remove any financial responsibility that would typically fall on the individual in terms of hospital charges. They will pay for these expenses for the shooting victims based on what is appropriate to each of their circumstances, including whether or not they have health insurance and how much coverage they have.
Denver Health has announced that any patients from the shooting that aren’t capable to pay for their deductibles and co-pays will have their hospital bills discounted by 70 percent, within the laws of the state. Each of the patents’ cases will receive an individual evaluation. That said, nearly half of the patients in the hospital do not have health insurance.
A lack of health insurance is not uncommon in Colorado, where 1.5 million people are either uninsured or underinsured, according to a Colorado Health Access Survey. This means that almost three out of every ten people in the state aren’t adequately covered.
