A team of researchers through a latest study revealed that fifty hospitals in the United States are charging the uninsured people more than three times the actual cost of patient care.

Study researchers showed that every one of the here medical facilities are owned by for-profit entities. The hospitals with the highest markups are not in expensive neighborhoods or big cities, where the market might explain the higher prices.

The first on the list of most expensive hospitals is North Okaloosa Medical Center, a 110-bed facility in the Florida Panhandle located about an hour outside of Pensacola. Here the uninsured patients are charged 12.6 times higher than the actual cost of patients care.

Community Health Systems operates 25 of the hospitals on the list and Hospital Corp. of America operates another 14.

Study co-author Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, "They are price-gouging because they can. They are marking up the prices because no one is telling them they can't".

He further said that these hospitals have the highest markup of all 5,000 hospitals in the United States, this means when it costs the hospital $100, they are going to charge you, on average, $1,000.

Researchers said that other consumers face such high charges are patients whose hospitals are not in their insurance company's preferred network of providers, patients using workers' compensation and those covered by automobile insurance policies.

For example, Carepoint Health-Bayonne Medical Center in Bayonne, N. J., also charges almost 12.6 times the actual cost of patient care.

Disputing the study's findings officials representing the 50 hospitals said they provide significant discounts to uninsured and underinsured patients to help cover their out-of-pocket costs.