Posted on 09/21/2014 7:24:21 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The next time you visit a hospital, it is your wallet that may end up hurting the most. All over the United States, it has become common practice for hospitals to wildly inflate medical bills. For example, it has been reported that some hospitals are charging up to 30 dollars for a single aspirin pill. And as you will see below, some victims report being billed tens of thousands of dollars for a non-surgical hospital visit that lasts only a few hours. When something is seriously wrong with us, most of us never stop to ask our health professionals how much it will cost to actually treat us. In that moment, we are desperate and we just want someone to help us. Many doctors and hospitals take full advantage of this by billing their "customers" as much as they feel they can possible get away with. It is a legal scam that is bilking ordinary Americans out of billions of dollars every single year.
Over the weekend, the New York Times reported on one case that is a perfect example of the outrageous medical billing that I am talking about...
Before his three-hour neck surgery for herniated disks in December, Peter Drier, 37, signed a pile of consent forms. A bank technology manager who had researched his insurance coverage, Mr. Drier was prepared when the bills started arriving: $56,000 from Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, $4,300 from the anesthesiologist and even $133,000 from his orthopedist, who he knew would accept a fraction of that fee.
He was blindsided, though, by a bill of about $117,000 from an “assistant surgeon,” a Queens-based neurosurgeon whom Mr. Drier did not recall meeting.
“I thought I understood the risks,” Mr. Drier, who lives in New York City, said later. “But this was just so wrong — I had no choice and no negotiating power.”
The practice known as "drive-by doctoring" has gotten completely and totally out of control.
All over America, doctors are popping into surgeries or are stopping by to talk to another doctor's patients for a few minutes and are charging thousands of dollars for this "assistance".
It is a morally reprehensible scam that needs to be stopped.
Another thing that needs to be stopped is the practice that many hospitals have of billing patients for emergency medications at a rate that is thousands of times over cost.
For example, just check out what happened when 52-year-old Marcie Edmonds went in to a hospital in Arizona to get treated for a scorpion sting...
With the help of a friend, she called Poison Control and was advised to go to the nearest hospital that had scorpion antivenom, Chandler Regional Medical Center. At the hospital, an emergency room doctor told her about the antivenom, called Anascorp, that could quickly relieve her symptoms. Edmonds said the physician never talked with her about the cost of the drug or treatment alternatives.
Her symptoms subsided after she received two doses of the drug Anascorp through an IV, and she was discharged from the hospital in about three hours.
Weeks later, she received a bill for $83,046 from Chandler Regional Medical Center. The hospital, owned by Dignity Health, charged her $39,652 per dose of Anascorp.
Did that hospital actually need to charge that much?
Of course not.
Hospitals down in Mexico only charge $100 per dose of Anascorp.
And anyone that has ever been in for major surgery knows how outrageous some of these hospital bills can be.
For instance, consider the experience of an NBC News reporter that chose to have neck surgery for degenerative disc disease....
Once I got my itemized bill, the grand total was a little over $66,013.40! That was for a one night stay and a four level vertebrae fusion surgery. The charges included $22 for one sleeping pill, $427 for one dissecting tool, and $32,000 for four titanium plates and ten screws.
I brought it to Todd Hill, a fee based patient advocate who helps people decipher their medical bills. "The screws in your procedure were billed at $605 a piece for a total of $6050 dollars. We've seen those in our past research for $25 or $30," he said. "In this case, the markup is tremendous," he added.
One of the primary reasons why so many Americans die completely broke is because medical bills can run up to astronomical heights if you happen to have a terminal illness.
For example, a while back Time Magazine reported on one cancer patient in California that had run up nearly a million dollars in hospital bills before he died...
By the time Steven D. died at his home in Northern California the following November, he had lived for an additional 11 months. And Alice had collected bills totaling $902,452. The family’s first bill — for $348,000 — which arrived when Steven got home from the Seton Medical Center in Daly City, Calif., was full of all the usual chargemaster profit grabs: $18 each for 88 diabetes-test strips that Amazon sells in boxes of 50 for $27.85; $24 each for 19 niacin pills that are sold in drugstores for about a nickel apiece. There were also four boxes of sterile gauze pads for $77 each. None of that was considered part of what was provided in return for Seton’s facility charge for the intensive-care unit for two days at $13,225 a day, 12 days in the critical unit at $7,315 a day and one day in a standard room (all of which totaled $120,116 over 15 days). There was also $20,886 for CT scans and $24,251 for lab work.
The sad truth is that the U.S. health care system has become a giant money making scam, and all of us are the victims.
Those that work in this industry should be greatly ashamed for what they are doing to us.
Just consider the following numbers...
-It has been estimated that hospitals in the United States overcharge their patients by about 10 billion dollars every single year.
-Medical bills are the number one reason why Americans file for bankruptcy. One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
-According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills cause more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States.
-Health insurance is not nearly as much protection as you might think. According to a report published in the American Journal of Medicine, of all bankruptcies caused by medical debt approximately 75 percent of the time the people actually did have health insurance.
-Hospitals are not shy about sending debt collection agencies after people with unpaid medical bills. In fact, collection agencies seek to collect unpaid medical bills from approximately 30 million Americans every year.
-Back in 1980, less than 10 percent of U.S. GDP went to health care. Today, about 18 percent of U.S. GDP goes toward health care.
-If the U.S. health care system was a nation, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet.
Does anyone out there have any doubt that the system is completely broken?
Please share this article with as many people as you can. Hospitals all over America are brazenly ripping us off, and we need to stand up and say that enough is enough.
The system is not broken, it is functioning exactly the way new world order wants it to.
If you study new world order (minus the disinformation) you will develop an understanding.
How interesting! I do it the other way around and it usually just costs me a few bottles of wine and some regret./s
I hope everything is ok?
So what does one do?
For an er visit with a kidney stone the bill was 3 grand PLUS a grand for the er doc. Four grand an hour equivalent. I won’t pay it. I offered 650. Still excessive. They turned the offer down.
Nobody is worth a four grand an hour.
Medicine is more like theft.
So what happened?
Satanic cover for the 2008 failed bailout. And when that failed thus the rabid push and bribes to pass Extortion-Care. “care” for the bailout.
Yours is an example of why the focus needs to remain on amending health insurance and not on amending health care.
Bookmark
I would imagine it's just the tip of the iceberg.
Yes everything was fine. Thanks for asking.
Who found themselves holding the bag 2008?
Did the 08 “bailout” succeed?
Thus the rabid bribery to establish Extortion-Care as a Work Camp.
What with the advances in modern medicine they can tell you exactly how sick you are, after draining your bank account.
Nothing so spectacular for myself. I was at a heart doctor a week ago to get a stress test and they asked for a co-pay. I thought it would be the usual such as $20 that the eye doctor and regular doctor ask for.
They wanted $200..... that would explain the people laying on the floor around me, some dead, some gasping for air....
I did not get that stress test but an ultrasound. the stress test had to be schedule later as Aetna would not pay if both were done or so I was told. See next post for more.
In short I cannot get the test the doctor wanted because I hadn’t had a heart attack yet.
I can get the test once I do get the heart attack.......
Coverage Decision For:
9335 Echocardiography, transthoracic, includes M-mode recording when performed, during rest and
CV stress test using treadmill, bicycle and/or pharmacologically induced stress; including
performance of continuous ECG monitoring, with physician supervision
Coverage for this services has been denied for the following reason:
We are unable to approve the requested procedure based on MedSolutions Cardiac Imaging
Guidelines. The clinical information provided does not describe the results of a recent history and/or
physical examination, meaningful contact with an established individual or, if appropriate, recent
EKG, chest x-ray, or echocardiogram.
This coverage denial was based on the terms of the member’s benefit plan. The plan does not cover
services that are not medically necessary. Please see the reference to non-medically necessary
services listed in the Exclusions section of the benefit booklet/handbook or refer to the description of
You can look all over (even in Cali) and find MRIs done for $300-$500, but my wife gets hers done at work (she's an RN, works in the hospital) and I see they are billed at $2200. In the last 15 years NMR technology has advanced enough to probably make it possible to mass produce the things so every drug store could have one, like the automatic BP machines. However the non-technology cost of fielding them (ie insurance) is way too high for that. Lots of smart people have worked on NMR and I remember folks building desktop units 15 years ago, but I don't find any for sale today. Actually there are a bunch of interesting technologies like that where modern methods go wanting because the effect of insurance costs on margin beat innovation by smaller startups into a paste. Look at general aviation. Only when the cost of the insurance is a pittance compared to the bottom line do you see any advancement.
Not just illegals but people with no insurance, no incomes and no way to collect from them. Others with incomes who just don't want to pay..........
And look at the number of trained medical personnel in a typical hospital emergency room that have to get paid and the cost of the medical equipment that goes along with saving lives.........
Christiana Hospital in Wilmington, DE operates, in addition to the hospital, multiple off-site doctors’ offices. Last year, I noticed a $23 charge for “facility fee”. On the bill, it showed a $74 payment by Medicare and a $77 adjustment, leaving me a balance of $26.
This was for a doctor’s office visit, in addition to the doctor’s bill, for nothing. Medicare increased the charge because it what the hospital should have charged. Long and short of it, Christiana Hospital has sent this to a collection agency. I am not responsible for their mistakes and will not pay when no services where performed.
I HAVE REFUSED TO PAY AND WILL CONTINUE TO REFUSE.
They are trying to make a profit. They have to treat anyone who walks in and can’t pay, so they soak the unfortunate individuals who have a job. Just another government-sponsored transfer of wealth from those who earn it to those who vote democrat.
Yup-The ER is THEIR family doctor.
They don’t pay so OUR bill is padded to cover the losses
Unreal. My son was born few years earlier and company insurance paid for everything except $300.
Couple years ago I suffered a mini-stroke after a chiropractor twisted my neck too hard.
Went to the ER where, theoretically, I should have been seen *immediately* to receive the shot that minimizes stroke damage, ~if~ it’s given within a two hour “window”.
*Seven hours later*, after all the “protected classes” had their snotty noses and belly aches attended to, I was sent for an MRI.
Too late to “see” anything and way too late for the ‘miracle shot’.
Living with after effects.
Hope all those parasites ahead of me enjoy their lives.
*My* ER copay was $100, besides the costs for the now-useless tests.
How much did they cough up, that night?
Hubby and I were the only two there who were melanin-challenged.
We didn’t matter.
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