Add yet another first place health care ranking no one wants for Texas: We have the highest hospital bills in the country.
A new study has found that Texas prices (before insurance) were on average 6.4 times higher than the Medicare-allowable amount in 2018, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins, who looked at Medicare fee-for-service claims around the country that year. The four most expensive metro areas were in Texas: Brownsville-Harlingen led the country with a markup rate of 9.4, followed by Laredo, El Paso, and McAllen-Edinburgh-Mission. All are on the Texas-Mexico border, in one of the poorest parts of the state with one of the highest uninsured rates, where residents are often forced to forgo care or get stuck with bills they simply cannot pay.
