Sponsors:	The Chicago Bar Foundation Illinois Legal Aid Online
Date:	Thursday, May 14, 2009
Time:	12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Speakers:	Alan Alop, Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago Heather O'Donnell, Policy Director of Health Care and Human Services, Center for Tax and Budget Accountability

HOSPITAL BILLS AND THE LEGAL AID CLIENT: An Overview of Non-Profit Hospitals' Legal Responsibility for Charity Care and Helping the Low Income Client with Hospital Bills

Low income people frequently do not have health care insurance but have as many medical issues and require hospital care just as often as the average person. Federal and state laws provide a certain level of a public health care safety-net through several avenues, including  1) Medicaid, the health care program for low income families, which is funded principally with federal and state dollars, 2) public hospitals and clinics, which are funded with a mix or federal, state and local tax dollars and 3) publicly-funded charity care, which is also subsidized with federal, state and local tax dollars given to non-profit hospitals in the form of tax breaks.

The least understood component of this publicly funded safety-net is the publicly-funded charity care.  Panelists from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and LAF will discuss non-profit hospitals' legal responsibility for charity care, tactics that hospitals use to evade providing charity care and possible responses to these tactics.  They also will describe the Illinois Fair Patient Billing Act and the Illinois Patient Discount Act.

Attachments

Click on the link(s) below to open the attached files.
File Name	Type	Size
Alop Handout.doc	DOC	22.5KB
Debt Guide Final inc cover and body 5 8 09.pdf	PDF	6.2MB
O'Donnell handout.ppt	PPT	140.8KB

Last Updated: 06/08/2009