Posted on 12/03/2013 6:37:18 AM PST by Red in Blue PA
SAN FRANCISCO — With blood oozing from deep lacerations, the two patients arrived at California Pacific Medical Center’s tidy emergency room. Deepika Singh, 26, had gashed her knee at a backyard barbecue. Orla Roche, a rambunctious toddler on vacation with her family, had tumbled from a couch, splitting open her forehead on a table.
On a quiet Saturday in May, nurses in blue scrubs quickly ushered the two patients into treatment rooms. The wounds were cleaned, numbed and mended in under an hour. “It was great — they had good DVDs, the staff couldn’t have been nicer,” said Emer Duffy, Orla’s mother.
Then the bills arrived. Ms. Singh’s three stitches cost $2,229.11. Orla’s forehead was sealed with a dab of skin glue for $1,696. “When I first saw the charge, I said, ‘What could possibly have cost that much?’ ” recalled Ms. Singh. “They billed for everything, every pill.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
1984
…and health care is now affordable all because of the Affordable Care Act generously bestowed upon us by our munificent Democrat leaders in Congress.
I’ve always said that the first line of defense in actually curtailing hospital costs is forcing hospitals to not only publish their price lists, but actually give them to patients and their families while in the hospital.
The excuses given usually are ‘why do you want to traumatize the family at such a time?’ My response is, ‘why do you want to traumatize the family by charging $120 for a bottle of Tylenol which you administer exactly one pill from?’
Alas, initially, it will harm the health of the average citizen as they suffer from heart attacks seeing exactly how much they’re paying.
The free market hasn’t applied to “healthcare” for a long time.
Note the folks getting the stitches didn’t know the cost until they got the bill much later. Most things, you know the price BEFORE you buy.
Maybe if they knew how much it’d be, they’d gone somewhere else, or done it themselves.
People today don’t even know what “insurance” is. The expectation for “medical insurance” is NOT insurance (which would be what you pay to cut your loss on a risk you don’t want realized - as in insuring mail or your car). It’s expected to be a coupon discount on expenses you know you will incur (not risk, but a guarantee of “loss”), i.e., simply a third party payer.
Somehow I don't think Fry is working holidays, nights, or weekends much.
The wasted money isn’t in the healthcare system, its in the insurance companies.
There is waste and inefficiencies and a need to keep investors happy through ever-increasing profits at all levels of the healthcare system. That's why Obamacare won't do a thing to reign in costs.
That $120 pays for your pill and also the pill of about 10 illegals or uninsured whos showed up at the ER and who will never pay a dime.
In addition to wages and salaries for doctors, nurses, and medical personnel, the American health care system has to provide profits for private hospitals, diagnostic centers, insurance companies, and for the accountants, attorneys and management consultants made necessary by the enormous litigation and regulatory compliance cost. American medicine is the most regulated in the world and the most criminalized.
And another big factor is that the rest of us have to make up the difference for the patients that are not profitable.
It has gotten to the point where some doctors in certain kinds of practices barely make any profit on Medicare and Medicaid patients. In fact, in many cases doctors actually lose money treating them.
NY Times??
Can hardly wait till they do an article about all inner city beatups, shootings, knifings, and how much they cost & who pays for them.
Not to mention Single Mothers whose children are paid for, and supported by the hospitals and by the various levels of government.
One of my favorites in the 'healthcare' debate, blame someone else! Insurance is the culprit! Or the billions spent on medical billing? Or health insurance profits, or malpractice insurance profits or regulations or monopolistic drug companies, or...
No one entity is responsible for the skyrocketing costs (or rather, that was the case, now the feds are to be blamed with PelosiCare...) But there is no leverage in the marketplace to reduce costs. Insurance companies have pretty much found that they can constantly raise premiums on doctors and patients, hospitals raise the street prices on their services and raise in network costs by a similar amount with near impunity. And I've yet to hear a medical billing company actually lowering costs, or medical supplies actually lowering prices.
Free markets do not work when there is no opposing leverage. And with PelosiCare, it's party time! Everyone forced to go through an insurance policy to access medical care! Prices are hidden for everyone! Except that monthly premium - that's the fault of Democrats or Republicans or...Nancy Pelosi. Certainly not the health care industry.
I don’t buy that at all.
Hospital costs are most out of control when an insurance company isn’t involved.
People in need of surgery or treatment will shop around for the most economical provider (physician/hospital) for that particular need. Someone will need to develop a universal method/network of maintaining medical records. Enter the government (again), and the “cost” (tax) to support this “service”.
I work with a lot of hospitals. ALL of the executives I’ve ever met work extremely long hours including weekends and nights. The medical staff certainly work holidays on top.
Hospital profits are not ever increasing. I know quite a few hospitals who are barely hanging on.
They have to track every pill, every syringe in the building. They have to track every single action taken with every single patient. All of this requires some very expensive software and lots of time to install it.
I know one hospital that spent 9% of their entire operating budget just to audit what they were billing medicare. Because one mistake would allow the government to shut them down.
Look to the insurance companies and regulations if you want to reduce cost.
It's available to anyone who cares to download it: Link. And I believe the hospitals were livid when CMS made it available.
horse pucky
Hussein is a POS.
The cost isn’t in the stiches. It’s in the training, infrastructure, government BS, insurance company BS, etc. that physicians have to put up with. Additional government regulation can only increase the price. I’ve read that when you buy a car, 1/4 to 1/3 of the cost in government regulation, 1/4 in union pension and the rest is divided between variable cost and profit.
“Hospital costs are most out of control when an insurance company isn’t involved.”
Ask for the cash price. In most cases its half the list price or far less. Unless the doctor has been sued for providing cash patients better treatment in which case they’ll refuse to accept cash.
The overhead and interference of the insurance companies force prices up.
I work in HIPAA security for the healthcare industry. The govt released about 800 pages of new rules reinterpreting the thousands of pages of regulations this year.
Now the regulations apply to about 2 million more companies who never had to worry about HIPAA and probably won’t realize it until a govt auditor shows up at their front door.
The average small hospital will spend $1 million to meet the requirements. Bigger hospitals will easily spend $5-10 million. This is just to solve one small area of regulatory compliance.
Next year there will be more changes which will require more money.
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