Florida

#HospitalFails

While nonprofit hospitals are organized as charities to deliver affordable health care to those in their communities who need it most, many of America’s largest nonprofits are making big money. Nonprofit hospitals around the country are paying executives exorbitant salaries and adopting policies that put profits over patients, like pursuing predatory collection practices, closing hospitals that serve underserved areas but aren’t performing financially and failing to provide free or reduced-cost care for qualifying low-income patients. Too often, these policies are combined with poor health care outcomes for patients.

Last updated: February 23, 2026 at 2:53pm

Charity Care Spending

Florida nonprofit hospitals averaged a “fair share deficit” of $485 million dollars from 2020 to 2022, according to the Lown Institute Hospitals Index. In other words, Florida’s nonprofit hospitals pocketed a whopping $485 million more in tax breaks than they spent on community benefits and charity care for low-income patients. In fact, the Lown Institute found that nearly 50% of Florida’s nonprofit hospitals averaged a fair share deficit for that period.¹

Hospital Collection Policies

Most hospitals (59%) allow at least one extraordinary collection action, like wage garnishments, selling debt to a third party or denying non-emergency care. Of the 83 Florida hospitals investigated by the Lown Institute from June 2024 to April 2025, more than 40% had written policies allowing them to take legal actions against patients for unpaid medical debt. Eleven Florida hospitals’ policies even allowed them to deny nonemergency care to patients who owe the hospital money.²

Medical Debt and Consumer Protections

Medical debt adversely affects many Americans. Given vague and rarely enforced federal medical debt protections, states are on the frontlines of patient medical debt protections. Unfortunately Florida:

Does not cap interest charged on medical debt.
Does not have standards for monthly payment plans or cap the payment amounts for these plans.³

The Burden of Medical Debt in Florida

In Florida, an average of 8.7% of adults in a given year (or 1.5 million people) reported having medical debt, according to a Peterson-KFF analysis of data from 2019 to 2021.⁴

Medical Debt in Collections

Based on credit bureau data from August 2023, Urban Institute found that 4% of Floridians have medical debt in collections, more than the national average of 3%. In Florida’s communities of color, 5% of people have medical debt in collections, exceeding the 4% national average.⁵

Price Transparency

A survey of 2,000 hospitals nationwide from July to November 2024 found that just 39 of the 135 Florida hospitals reviewed – a mere 29% – had complied with federal regulations requiring all hospitals to post their prices online and make them easily accessible and searchable.⁶

Hospital Overcharging

On average, from 2020 to 2022, hospitals in Florida charged patients with private insurance an average of 346% of what they charged Medicare patients for the same services.⁷

Hospital Price Variation

A 2025 review of Florida hospital prices showed huge price variations for the same medical procedures. The price charged for a major hip/knee replacement without complications varied by as much 46x from one hospital to the next, ranging from $1,700 to more than $80,000.⁸

Additionally, some hospitals charged patients wildly different prices for the same procedure. Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside in Jacksonville, for example, charged some insurance plans as much as $52,000 for an appendectomy and as little as $1,700 for the same procedure.⁹

Grade: #HospitalFail

Lown Institute, “Making the hospital tax exemption work for communities, An analysis of nonprofit hospitals in twenty states,” April 2025, https://lownhospitalsindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/fair-share-2025-national-report-20250409.pdf, pg. 15
Lown Institute, “Hospital Financial Assistance and Debt Collection Policies,” June 2025, https://lownhospitalsindex.org/report-hospital-financial-assistance-and-debt-collection-policies/
Commonwealth Fund, “State Protections Against Medical Debt: A Look at Policies Across the U.S. in 2025,” July 2025, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2025/jul/state-protections-against-medical-debt-look-policies-across-us
Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, “Access & Affordability: The Burden of Medical Debt in the United States,” September 2024, https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medical-debt-in-the-united-states/#Share%20of%20adults%20who%20have%20medical%20debt,%20by%20state,%202019-2021
Urban Institute, “Debt in America: An Interactive Map,” November 2025, https://apps.urban.org/features/debt-interactive-map/?type=medical&variable=medcoll&state=12
PatientRightsAdvocate.org, “Seventh Semi-Annual Hospital Price Transparency Compliance Report,” November 2024, https://www.patientrightsadvocate.org/seventh-semi-annual-hospital-price-transparency-report-november-2024, pg. 28
Rand Corporation, “Prices Paid to Hospitals by Private Health Plans: Findings from Round 5.1 of an Employer-Led Transparency Initiative,” December 2024, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1144-2-v2.html
PatientRightsAdvocate.org, “The Interim Semi-Annual Hospital Price Transparency Report,” September 2025, https://www.patientrightsadvocate.org/interim-semi-annual-hospital-price-transparency-report, Appendix D, pg. 60
PatientRightsAdvocate.org, “The Interim Semi-Annual Hospital Price Transparency Report,” September 2025, https://www.patientrightsadvocate.org/interim-semi-annual-hospital-price-transparency-report, Appendix B, pg. 29

Consumers for Quality Care (CQC) is a coalition of advocates and former policymakers working to provide a voice for patients in the health care debate as they demand better care. CQC is led by a board of directors that includes the Honorable Donna Christensen, physician and former Member of Congress; Jim Manley, former senior advisor to Senators Edward Kennedy and Harry Reid; Jason Resendez, community advocate and health care strategist; and Mary L. Smith, former CEO of the Indian Health Service.