A high court in South Carolina has ruled that state law doesn't force hospitals to give uninsured patients the same discounts offered insured patients. A lower court had held that a loophole in state law gave all patients access to the same discounts through 2004, which could cut 50 percent or more off a standard hospital bill according to some estimates. However, the South Carolina Supreme Court didn't buy this argument, noting that the type of contracts referred to by the 1960s-era law weren't used by hospitals any more.
Attorneys for the uninsured patients, meanwhile, say they aren't going to give up. They're going to continue to press a lawsuit against several state hospitals alleging that the uninsured patients were cheated. Because they can no longer base their case on state law--which required hospitals to offer anyone the best rate possible if the bills were paid within seven days--they're going forward using the notion of common law and fairness.
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