San Antonio Current, May 29, 2007 SAN ANTONIO -- Trinity University graduate Brent Evans had finally realized his decades-old dream of opening a record store - Music Town, a quaint little space on Broadway across from Central Market. The shop was just breaking even, a considerable feat for the first month of any entrepreneurial endeavor. However, Evans didn't have health insurance - "All my money is tied up in these racks of music," he told the Current.  It's an oversight writ large in his thoughts after a white truck exited a Jack in the Box on April 15 as he rode his bike home. The truck hit the side of Evans's bike and he hit the asphalt chin first. As a white blur zoomed away, Evans said he peeled his head up from the road and his chin began "raining big drops" of blood. At that moment, Evans had to make a decision: Should he go to the emergency room and face a large medical bill he might not be able to pay, or try to take care of it himself and risk scarring and infection? It's a choice America's 47 million uninsured run the risk of facing every day. As counterintuitive as it may seem, the uninsured are charged on average two-and-a-half times more for the same procedure than those that have insurance, according to a Harvard study published by the journal Health Affairs. The American Hospital Association says that "everyone is charged the same amount." This is technically true; the hospital does give insurance companies the same initial bill that they give the uninsured. The difference in costs comes in the enormous negotiated discounts insurance companies receive. Ron Carson, a professor at the Institute for Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch, has his own theories about inflated costs. He writes via email: "Hospitals inflate their fees for a number of reasons (e.g. cost-shifting, or as a benchmark for negotiating discounts.)"   "It's a consequence of our not having a universal system of health-care delivery in which everyone is entitled to at least a decent minimum of basic health services," says UTMB professor Carson.