Here's one little and effective suggestion about cost shifting:

"After some negotiation with New Jersey's hospital industry, the governor on May 5, 2008, introduced Assembly Bill No. 2909, limiting the prices charged uninsured residents of New Jersey with an income below 500 percent of the federal poverty line to 115 percent of the applicable Medicare rates. By August 2008, the state assembly had passed the bill, and the governor promptly signed it into law.

As President Obama prepares his address to the joint chambers of Congress on Sept. 9, he would do well by America's middle class to follow New Jersey's lead by proposing to apply this upper limit nationwide."

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/ending-hospital-price-discrimination-against-the-uninsured/

(There's no reason to limit it to 500% of poverty, either - that's just what the provider lobbyists extracted since they don't collect on those charges from the poor anyway, they attack the middle class with insurance problems. Not even uninsured, necessarily - Hospitals can and do do it if the insurer didn't have to pay the charges in part or in full.)