A TikTok video from January told people that most hospitals are required to provide financial assistance, including free care, to people whose income falls under a certain level.
The video went viral. It earned 1.5 million views to date and a repost of the video from the same account gained 3.4 million views. The video has been viewed over 7 million times on Twitter and is gaining traction again thanks to a July 6 repost that has been retweeted more than 15,000 times.
The Affordable Care Act mandated nonprofit hospitals provide financial assistance to people with low levels of income and many for-profit hospitals do the same.
However, the exact policy and eligibility requirements vary by state and by hospital, so it’s important to check a hospital’s exact financial assistance policies. For example, not every hospital provides financial assistance for people with incomes up to $38,000, like some reposts suggested.
A provision of the Affordable Care Act mandates hospitals must provide a “financial assistance policy” that must “must apply to all emergency and other medically necessary care provided by the hospital facility” in order for the hospital to maintain its tax-exempt status as a nonprofit.
According to the American Hospital Association’s 2021 fast facts, about 57% of community hospitals are nonprofits. So this provision applies to most hospitals.
To receive this financial assistance, also called charity care, a patient must receive medically necessary or emergency care at the hospital. The federal government defines “medically necessary” care as “health care services or supplies needed to diagnose or treat an illness, injury, condition, disease or its symptoms and that meet accepted standards of medicine.”
But there’s no eligibility requirements the ACA outlines aside from that. Each state can set its own definitions of what’s medically necessary, and there is no income limit the federal government sets.
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