The University of Virginia Health System, which sues thousands of patients each year, seizing wages and home equity to collect on overdue bills, said Friday it would increase financial assistance, give bigger discounts to the uninsured and “reduce our reliance on the legal system,” the Washington Post reported. Doug Lischke, UVA Health System’s chief financial officer, called the new policy “a first step” that could later include additional financial assistance. He said that the state-owned health-care system also plans to ask the Virginia General Assembly to change a law requiring state agencies, including health systems, to “aggressively collect” unpaid bills and charge 6 percent interest on the balance. But independent experts said the policy change, which comes on the heels of a Kaiser Health News investigation published in the Washington Post detailing the public medical center’s aggressive collection practices, still leaves numerous patients exposed to lawsuits and crippling bills. KHN found that UVA sued patients more than 36,000 times over six years ending in June 2018, sending many families into bankruptcy. It routinely billed uninsured patients for far more than what a typical insurance company would have paid. By leaving family assets vulnerable and not fully discounting list-price charges, the new guidelines remain “very tough on the poor and near-poor who have managed to amass anything of value that will help them with the daily costs of life,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health policy professor at George Washington University.
