US hospitals charge uninsured, self-paying patients more than twice the amount they receive for insured patients, according to a new study on health policy.

Study author Gerard Anderson of the Center for Hospital Finance and management at Johns Hopkins University said that on average, patients that have to pay for their own care in the United States get charged 2.5 times what insurers are billed for their customers for the same care in hospitals.

"The markup on hospital care for these individuals, especially for those who can afford it least, is unjustifiable," Anderson said in a statement summarizing his research.

The hospitals also charged those patients an average of three times the allowed costs for the same services set by the government-run Medicare health insurance program available mainly to elderly people.

For-profit hospitals were the worst offenders, on average marking up a 100 dollar Medicare-set cost to 410 dollars for someone not using insurance to pay for the service.

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Anderson argues that the US needs to either provide health insurance to uninsured people to overcome the problem, or for hospitals to charge the same rate for everyone.

"Hospitals should do the right thing and lower the prices they charge the uninsured," he said.