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 $27,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
They don’t call the first 60 minutes after a major trauma “The Golden Hour” for nuthin’
And thst is why many insurance companies are buying up hospitals
and making them privately run as a 'non-profit'
since any profit can be returned to the share-holders to continue its non-profit status
Anywhere else, this would be called a 'money-laundering organization'.
Well, so are roads and bridges and sewers and electricity and a whole list of things but they don’t get provided with a license to steal.
Abusive and confiscatory pricing.
I’ll also remind you that much of the medical training system is heavily subsidized by the public because the public needs it.
Hotshot.
Mostly disposable so it can’t be worth much. Why would anyone be so stupid to throw away something that can be sterilized and reused?
One reason. They aren’t paying for it and cost is no object.
J. Regos /WSJ
Sadly gone.
Yeah, and he died the very day he was scheduled to talk to a Russian about the clintons.
Nothing to see here, move along...
Yeah, well duh.
You must be a doctor because you think everyone else is just stupid.
25k for a broken leg? Was it a compound fracture? Theres no way a simple break runs to those kind of numbers.
Yeah, it’s an interesting to observe.
Since I pay out of pocket for health expenses, I use Pro-Health for my lab work which i get done every 6 months. They submit the blood to Quest labs, and the charge for my work is around 145$.
I thought that was high, so I complained to my doctor and asked how much would the same work be at his lab in the hospital. he said as much as 800% higher, and that they are not allowed to negotiate down with Quest as Pro-health is.
My mom has to have one of her legs wrapped in order to prevent her lymphedema from causing weeping wounds. When she went to the wound center to have this dressing applied, they charged her 900$ per wrap + the cost of the visit. Medicare was billed for this, she had to pay the co-pay.
That same wrap, which consists of 3 wraps, can be bought multiple times over for under 100 dollars on the internet, and I apply it for free.
I looked at the bills and wondered about the person who just wants to pay cash. I bet they don't get the negotiated rate.
“Their insurance was mostly Medicaid.”
Medicaid isn’t insurance. It’s taxpayer funded welfare.
L
$21,000 for the first 35 minutes?
So what was the bill for the rest of the hospital stay? 350K A million?
That should only take um 10 years to pay off. Sounds reasonable.
Many years ago, my daughter had an emergency appendectomy. Not long after which, I accused the hospital of having the surgery at the civic auditorium. They looked at me perplexed, then I told them their operating room wasn’t big enough to hold all the people sending me invoices.
Just a guess, but it probably takes a long time and many $$$ to get the screws approved for medical use in the first place. Then you divide the costs by the number of screws you can sell and add a hefty profit...
Through decades of health care consumers paying for everything with other people's money and thus, caring not one bit about the price. (Who cares what it costs? I'm worth every penny!)
Much the same thing is happening to college tuition.
A few months ago ... I called my local ortho doctors group ... for a price.
Wow, someone who calls for a price? I bet they all had a good laugh.
And, the lawyers. Never forget the ambulance-chasers and class-action lawyers.
Well.....the costs are so high because the hospital is trying to recoup losses for other uninsured or deadbeat patients.
I’m thinking of joining a Christian health sharing thing instead of insurance. But then I wouldn’t get the “negotiated” rate that my insurance company gets them down to. A moot point though - my insurance company won’t cover me as an individual anymore after being with them for 15+ years.
But that’s the thing. There are apparently no definite prices for treatment.
Cost shifting.
L
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