In order to fund emergency health care for indigent patients, the U.S. provides billions of dollars in subsidies to hospitals. But these subsidies allocate aid to facilities that need it least, fail to protect indigent patients from high charges, and cost substantially more than the total value of free and discounted care provided to the uninsured.Hospitals in 2019 provided $42 billion in medical care for which they were not paid in full, but every year they receive about $49 billion in public funds for the purpose, mostly as add-on payments to Medicare and Medicaid. Thus, hospitals alone received an average of $1,788 per uninsured U.S. resident—$761 more than the average level of uncompensated care that the uninsured received from all medical providers.Federal subsidies nonetheless prove inadequate for many facilities because funds are distributed senselessly: in 2023, for the largest type of hospital subsidy, New Hampshire received $2,123 per poor resident; Wyoming, only $4. Within states, the distribution is just as arbitrary, and funds are often provided without any requirement that additional services will be delivered in return.