Date Posted: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 at 2:00 PM CST

Contact:
Richard Scruggs
Scruggs Law Firm, P.A.
(662) 281-1212

UNINSUREDS BRING FIVE MORE CLASS ACTION LITIGATIONS

AGAINST NONPROFIT HOSPITALS

CLASS ACTIONS AGAINST NONPROFIT HOSPITALS

FOR FAILING TO PROVIDE GOVERNMENT REQUIRED CHARITY CARE

EXPANDS TO ELEVEN STATES

Oxford, Mississippi, (June 22, 2004) -- Following uninsured patients’ class action lawsuits brought last week against thirteen nonprofit hospitals located in eight different states, class action lawsuits today have been filed against five different nonprofit hospitals by uninsured patients of those hospitals.  These most recent defendant nonprofit hospitals are located in Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri and Texas.  Accordingly, suits by uninsured patients, who have been victimized by the failure of nonprofit hospitals to fulfill their obligations to provide government required charity care, is growing rapidly and is proceeding in almost all the major geographic regions of the country.  

The class action lawsuits filed today by uninsured plaintiffs are:

•           In Arizona: Defendant: Banner Health; United States District Court, District of Arizona; litigation filed by Zimmerman Reed LLP.

•           In Colorado: Defendant: Centura Health Corporation; Catholic Health Initiatives; Catholic Health Inititiaives Colorado; and Portercare Adventist Heath System; In the United States District Court for the District of Colorado; litigation filed by Purvis, Gray & Murphy, LLP and Law Offices of Archie Lamb LLC.

•           In Illinois: Defendant: Resurrection Medical Center and Resurrection Health Care; In the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division; litigation filed by Clifford Law Offices, P.C.

•           In Missouri: Defendants: BJC Health System dba BJC Healthcare; In the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri; litigation filed Bartimus, Frickleton, Robertson & Obetz, P.C. and Gray, Ritter & Graham, P.C.

•           In Texas: Defendants: Baylor Health Care System, Baylor University Medical Center; In the United States District Court for the Northern District of Dallas; litigation filed by Frenkel & Frenkel, P.C. and Scruggs Law Firm, PA.

Cases of a similar nature are expected to be filed in the near future against major hospitals in more states.

Named as a conspirator in all of the cases is the American Hospital Association (AHA), the industry’s trade association, which provides substantial advice to the defendant nonprofit hospitals on billing and collection practices as well as other aspects of hospital operations.  The defendant nonprofit hospitals charge their uninsured patients “artificial sticker price” for their healthcare, higher than any other patient class, and then aggressively pursue those patients who can’t pay by using often demeaning and predatory collection practices that all too frequently have resulted in economically debilitating consequences to the uninsured patient, including personal bankruptcy.

Responses by some nonprofit hospitals and the AHA to the suits reveal that the hospitals are simply attempting to gloss over the fact that many of the nation’s nonprofit hospitals are intentionally breaching their contractual obligations with the federal, state, and local authorities to provide charitable medical care to their uninsured patients.  Despite this, these nonprofit hospitals are still grabbing their substantial tax exemptions by misleading the public and government authorities with a public relations campaign of misinformation and financial data produced in many instance by  “Hollywood type” accounting schemes.  As a result, contrary to what they would have the public and authorities believe, the defendant nonprofit hospitals, aided and abetted by the AHA, are engaged in amassing and hoarding billions of dollars of untaxed income derived from multiple sources, including: the breaching of their agreements to provide affordable charitable healthcare to the uninsured; predatory collection practices targeted principally at the uninsured; the upstreaming of millions of dollars from the hospital’s profit making enterprises, some of which have little or nothing to do with healthcare; and the establishing and maintaining of offshore accounts in tax havens known for their secrecy.  In effect, as a result of these tactics, the defendant nonprofit hospitals are pulling enormous sums of monies -- potentially trillions of dollars collectively as some sources estimate -- out of the country’s already financially hard-pressed healthcare system.

The defendant nonprofit hospitals and the AHA know full well that the uninsured patients are being charged “sticker shock” prices for hospital healthcare.  They know full well that the true fair market value for their services are the discounted prices they have arranged for those patients with Medicaid and private health insurance.  They know full well that they are distorting the figures they are reporting as charity care and that practices such as taking unpaid hospital charges as both bad debt and charity care is not appropriate.  The defendant nonprofit hospitals know full well that, given the vast liquid assets they hold, they can afford to honor their contractual obligations with governmental authorities as well as live up their own mission statements.  These obligations and those missions are to provide charity healthcare for uninsured patients, the patient group which needs it the most.

For more information on these profiteering hospitals and the litigation against them, go to www.nfplitigation.com

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