Our Mission Statement
Medi-Cost was created to educate and assist you with
locating the highest quality hospitals with the lowest
prices.
In the last two years we have become proactive in
helping the uninsured and underinsured deal with
excessive hospital bills. A recent Harvard study on
bankruptcies reports that roughly half of all
bankruptcies result from medical bills.
Medi-Cost seeks to help navigate the overwhelming maze
of hospital costs, and the complicated quality data. We
aim to empower the individual to get equitable treatment
in hospital billing while maintaining excellent quality
of care. We believe that all people deserve to be
charged fair prices for their health care. We believe
that there needs to be transparency in hospital billing,
and every citizen should know how much they are being
charged and why. We believe that not for profit
hospitals should be held to a standard that reflects a
philanthropic, not for profit, attitude.
Providing Value. What hospitals give you the most for
your money? If you wish to investigate the amount
the hospital charges, it is important for you to know
what the hospital's cost are
in relation to what the hospital normally charges.
This information is provided in a simple "five star"
typed rating:
= Most value for dollar
 =
Least value for dollar
Providing Quality. How do these hospitals compare? This website provides you with information on how
well the hospitals in your area care for all their adult
patients with certain medical conditions. The data was
created through the efforts of the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS), the Department of Health and Human
Services, and other members of the Hospital Quality
Alliance: Improving Care Through Information (HQA). The
information on this website has been provided primarily by
hospitals that have agreed to submit quality information to
make public. Medi-Cost.com has ranked these participating
hospitals by percentile, and created an easy to use five
star system to help you compare this data at a glance.
 =
Highest Quality
 =
Lowest Quality
 =
Did not participate in quality ratings, no data is
available
Providing Ratings. What do others
think about this hospital?
We want your opinion, and would like to share it
with others. If you have been a patient of a hospital,
or would like to share your opinion of the treatment of
a patient at a hospital, you'll find it simple to do so.
Ratings are immediately posted, and you can view how
many others have voted, and the resulting average.
= Excellent
= Poor
= This hospital has not been rated by any users
Charity care for the uninsured. The hospital
may have a discount program for people below 400% of
poverty. On this website, you
can find out the income level that represents 100%,
200%, and 400% of poverty. The Daughters of Charity
Catholic Hospital chain in California has adopted a
policy giving discounts to all uninsured who have income
at or below 400% of poverty. The uninsured with income
above 400% of poverty are given a price equal to what
Managed care would pay. We have on this website a copy
of the Daughters of
Charity policy.
Non-Profit Hospitals. The hospital may assert to
you that, after all, they are a non-profit hospital. The
evidence is that most non-profit hospitals charge as
much if not more than corporate for profit hospitals.
There is generally no difference in the prices charged
by for-profit and non-profit hospitals. The following is
from The New York Times (November 23, 2005):
New York Times reports "Hearings have
terrified nonprofit leaders.."
In an article in the New York Times reporter
Stephanie Strom wrote "Nonprofit hospitals provide
no more charity care than taxpaying counterparts
do."
She went on to write "So what is charity today if it
is not aimed primarily at the have-nots? Has its
definition been stretched so broadly that it no
longer has meaning? If so are tax breaks that propel
our philanthropy justified? Representative Bill
Thomas, Republican of California, the chairman of
the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, has
raised those questions in a series of hearings
examining whether tax exemption is justified for
certain types of nonprofits."
Later in the story she writes "The hearings have
received little public notice but have terrified
nonprofit leaders . . . "
Senator Grassley (R-Iowa) has said "When nonprofit
hospitals sit on big cash reserves, I wonder how much
public service they're offering."
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