Posted on 07/24/2017 6:05:17 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
The charges started racking up the moment Annette Johnson arrived at Mount Sinai Hospital with a gunshot wound to her left forearm.
Doctors sliced open Johnson's arm and installed a $500 metal plate to shore up her shattered ulna, securing it with numerous bone screws that cost $246 apiece. There were morphine drips to quell pain, tetanus shots to prevent infection, blood screens and anesthesia.
Two years earlier in a different part of the city, Leo Leyva arrived at a North Side hospital with a gunshot wound to his back. His last memory before going under anesthesia was a nurse telling him they were going to take good care of him and to count up to 10.
As the 18-year-old drifted off, the emergency room team at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center went to work to save his life, starting IV lines and X-raying his chest and abdomen before performing an emergency surgery to remove the bullet and repair the damage.
For both Johnson and Leyva, just two of the thousands of gunshot victims in Chicago every year, the first hours and days of their hospital treatment were only the start of what would be costly recoveries that continue to this day.
Still, the bills for their initial treatment were staggering. In his first 35 minutes at the hospital, Leyva had racked up $21,521 in charges, and by the time he was released three weeks later the bill totaled more than $157,000. For Johnson, who spent barely 24 hours at Mount Sinai, the hospital charges approached $27,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
And I’ll wager not one of those who were shot had any sort of insurance to cover the costs.
L
The good news is the Chicago trauma surgeons know how to treat gunshot wounds better than anybody.
The high cost of a democrat run swamp. What mental health care? These people are already mentally damaged from living in the DNC combat zone known as Chicago.
And I’ll wager that the hospital dropped 70% of those inflated charges right off the bat.
They charge that much money because of insurance.
Total racket.
Seems reasonable to me.
I broke a leg skiing about 30 years ago - cost $25,000 (my back pocket, no insurance and I paid every cent).
It’s a $200,000 break now.
I know a man (a Trauma Director at a hospital) who broke his neck on a trampoline at a kids birthday party.
His final bill? North of $900,000.
$21,000 in 35 minutes to save a persons life seems low...
Why is it not criminal to sell screws for $242 each? Why are there no consumer protections against this?
It is not exactly a free market situation. What are you going to do, shop for screws when you are shot?
I know of a standard run of the mill white privileged lesbian who did her residency in the war zone of Chiraq and of course like all the other hypocrites is abandoning Chicago for “white bread” Wisconsin.
> This is just the tip of the iceberg for the ongoing rehab expenses <
That is an excellent point, and one that is usually overlooked.
Their insurance was mostly Medicaid. $201 million. But $101 million was self funded. The rest was Medicare, commercial insurance, and HMOs.
Seems outrageous to me and like taking advantage of a bad situation. People here keep screaming for a free market solution to healthcare. It won’t work as long as this kind of thing is allowed. What are you going to do, shop for service with a bullet in you?
Medicine is priced like it is indespensible. It has been given a license to steal for profit.
Medical costs are a joke. And how did they arrive at that price?
A few months ago I was thinking about have a cortisone injection in my hip. I called my local ortho doctors group, which is owned by our large hospital system, for a price.
Three separate people called me back with prices ranging from about $200 to $1200. I said never mind, I’ll just keep limping.
The US military should send their surgeons there TDY in preparation for deployments to rinky dink countries where we are fighting.
securing a broken arm bone is not saving a life. Plenty of ways to stop bleeding and the person would heal and have life without all that expense. Screws etc outrageously priced as well a surgeon medical team high fees is not ok, it cannot be met by average person making payments and insurance coverage is only passing the buck to others to pay.
Good for you you paid full amount, for others it would devastate their family’s budget for many years.
Granted it would be even better if people were not shot or injured by others or themselves in the first place. You and trampoline man chose bodily risk and got yourself hurt, others walk out their door and get hurt thru no or little fault of their own. Their debt for service is not of their choosing as yours was.
Some how personal responsibility should factor into who pays what and how much.
Ex-military doc’s?
It’s a stacked deck.
Until hospitals publish a list of charges, they can jack the price anytime they please.
Same hospital or clinic? Sounds about right. Do we need more examples that medicine is has loan sharks for business managers?
A friend’s wife was getting some kind of bone enhancment injections that were $90 last year through the Cox system in Springfield. This year her cost is $700. Why?
If there is anything that needs regulated in this country it is medicine and I don’t care how it is done. It will never reign itsself in. It must be made to do so.
Cows are bringing a dollar a pound at the stockyard. Beef yield from the carcass is about 50% or more so the cow I sell is worth about $2.00 a pound now butchered plus the cost of butchering. Two years ago it was about double that. Have you seen the price of good beef go down much in the market? You won’t either. They are enjoying huge profits. Medicine is worse.
In government-run health care, they use the hammer to install the screw.
I can’t believe I never thought of this angle. Who is paying? What is the limiting factor of the bill? How many people get automatic lifetime government checks for “disability” after getting shot in the butt or thigh?
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