Jeffrey Singer: The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less

When the man arrived at the hospital for surgery, the admitting clerk reviewed the terms of his policy and estimated the amount of his bill that would be paid by insurance. She asked him to pay his estimated portion in advance. (More hospitals are doing that now because too often patients don't pay their portions of the bills after insurance has paid.)

The insurance policy, the clerk said, would pay up to $2,500 for the surgeon—more than enough—and up to $2,500 for the hospital's charges for the operating room, nursing, recovery room, etc. The estimated hospital charge was $23,000. She asked him to pay roughly $20,000 upfront to cover the estimated balance.

Most people are unaware that if they don't use insurance, they can negotiate upfront cash prices with hospitals and providers substantially below the "list" price. Doctors are happy to do this. We get paid promptly, without paying office staff to wade through the insurance-payment morass.

I quoted him a reasonable upfront cash price, as did the anesthesiologist. We contacted a different hospital and they quoted him a reasonable upfront cash price for the outpatient surgical/nursing services. He underwent his operation the very next day, with a total bill of just a little over $3,000, including doctor and hospital fees. He ended up saving $17,000 by not using insurance

So it is insurance that creates the cost problem in medical treatment. The government solution is to force everyone to buy insurance. Makes total sense! If your only goal is to put the government in charge.

The truth is, the reason medical costs rose to the point they did even before Bozocare came to be, was because of medicare, which in turn sparked all type of other insurance. Docs began abusing Medicare so prices went up, people(Unions) started demanding companies pay for their insurance so prices went up. Before that there was catastrophic insurance, but not full coverage the way we have today, at least not for the average person.

True story, in 1946 I was 4 years old, my mother was a single mom because my dear daddy decided to run off with another woman when I was 3. Mom worked at a place called Westco Water paints and, at the time, was paid less than the men who worked there doing the same job, back in the day these things really did exist. At any rate my tonsils always acted up in the winter, this was during a time period when removing tonsils was almost an industry in itself. She would call Docs and they would make house calls and she could afford to pay them, even though we lived in a trailer. Bottom line, they took me to a hospital, took out my tonsils, I stayed in the hospital 3 days(they kept you longer in those days)and my mother, without insurance, was able to pay for it even on her low wage, of course she had to have a payment plan, but still she paid for it, kept us fed(me and my brother and her), and housed and didn't have to declare bankruptcy.

That was how it was back in the day before Medicare and other Insurance drove medical costs sky high.

Government works its malignancy on free markets in many ways.

An example: an area hospital wanted an MRI machine (in the 1990's). A permit was required, and it was denied. The reason given was that "excess use" of the machine would be made so as to increase billing & hence income. The hospital ended up joining with several other hospitals to share a MRI machine available on a rotating basis. The MRI was in the "trailer" portion of a tractor-trailer, which was dropped off every week or two for several days.

Government imposed scarcity no doubt negatively impacted care available at each hospital. It also restricts sales of MRI manufacturers, meaning that costs of developing and producing the machines is spread over fewer sales, meaning higher prices for each MRI machine.

Insurance is another toxin. And now that a huge government bureaucracy is being implemented to oversee every aspect of health care provision and insurance - itself already an overhead - costs will/are becoming astronomical.

The Central Planners require a gargantuan bureaucracy inquiring into every minutia so that THEY may make a decision for YOU. The Central Planners and their bureaucrats certainly don't work for free, they do not produce accurate results, and they have not the right. You and I each have the right to make our own decisions.

The Central Planners need to dry up and blow away. Their communist ideas are contrary to our freedom, our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence - notwithstanding the opinion of nine attorneys in costumes.

Count on it.

Obamacare is rationed-care. Once it kicks in, there will never be enough capacity. That will mean rationing which will mean death panels composed of bureaucrats answering only to their political masters.

And it is a dead certainty that those who possess the moral depravity to support this abomination possess the political will to deny lifesaving care to those who do not support their evil way of thinking.

BTW, like your “handle”. And your tag-line is dead on!

In this article the author made an important observation: 3rd party pay system caused the healthcare inflation. That include all the private insurance on the market today. Obamacare tries to contain the health inflation, but his direction is wrong. Instead of requiring everyone to have insurance, government should make health insurance with a deductible less than $20,000 illegal. That is only way to remove 3rd party pay system. The system before Obamacare wasn’t working, and the author knows that.

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