Posted on 01/12/2015 11:27:20 AM PST by Brad from Tennessee
On Sunday evening, CBS’ 60 Minutes did a feature story on Steven Brill’s new book, America’s Bitter Pill, in which Brill complains that Obamacare didn’t do enough to tackle the exorbitantly high price of U.S. hospital care. “Obamacare does zero to change any of that,” says Brill. That’s not exactly right. What Brill—and CBS—don’t tell you—is that Obamacare is driving hospitals to charge you more than they already do.
Steven Brill, founder of The American Lawyer and Court TV took a starring role in the health care debate when he published the Time article “Bitter Pill,” describing how hospitals charge extreme prices for ordinary care to the uninsured. For example, Sean Recchi, an uninsured lymphoma patient, went to MD Anderson Cancer Center, a world-renowned facility in Houston, to seek treatment. MD Anderson proceeded to charge him $283 for a $20 chest X-ray. They charged him more than $15,000 for blood tests costing a few hundred dollars. They charged him $13,702 for a dose of Rituxan, a lymphoma drug, for which the average U.S. hospital price is around $4,000. All told, Recchi’s course of treatment cost $83,900. Whatever he couldn’t pay was called “uncompensated care.”
MD Anderson is not struggling under the weight of bills unpaid by the uninsured. In 2010, MD Anderson recorded revenue of $2.05 billion and operating profits of $531 million. Brill recounted several other patients at other hospitals with similar stories. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Glad you’re on the mend.
That’s like asking the cost of a trip to the corner store. You might use a cup of gasoline.
But, you had to buy the car, pay the interest on any financing, do all periodic maintenance, fix anything that breaks, renew the licenses, carry insurance, and maybe even rent a garage. For an exact comparison, you have to hire an expert driver and keep him on standby.
Add all of that up, and divide by the number of trips you make. Suddenly, that trip isn’t so inexpensive.
It’s been my experience they’ll accept around 40% as payment in full. But of course that will now be 40% of a higher price.
My wife got a CT scan last year for $500. It pays to shop around.
Radiolgy storage is all digital now with reusable memory drives. No film!. The machines get paid for many times over as the cost of record storage per patient is practically nothing!! Other than the cost of various contrasts depending on the tests needed as well as labor, the actual per patient cost is practically nothing!
The public is really getting reamed!
I'll certainly shop around if it doesn't require an ER visit. While I was in the ER I was trying to make small talk to staff what a CAT scan costs and nobody knew nothing..
My wife didn’t have insurance at the time. Her doctor’s staff called around and found the lowest price.
When I had private insurance following a heart attack my cardiologist would give me heart scan every month. When my insurance ran out he told me they’d only charge me $40. I have no idea what they were charging the insurance company. I never paid attention to the bill since I wasn’t paying it.
Tell hospitals you are illegally here and get it all free
Or people that are flipping nuts...claiming all sorts of problems. And having to work them up.
But the fact is...facilities, Doctor's and everyone else plays CYA medicine....and the fact that one $1 Million dollar no pay ILLEGAL costs everyone else...ton's of money.
Well...that’s how it should be. Shop around...find the best price!!
Almost nothing.
But the hospital charges for various services have always covered overhead, and always will. What's changed is what they provide.
I live in rural New Hampshire. In 1968, my 75-year old grandfather had a heart attack here, and he died. The cost of his hospitalization came down to a few meals, a few drugs, a little bit of morphine. And he used everything they had to give him.
Now, tonight, it's snowing. If you wake up here at 1 am with chest pain, you call 911. Within 15 minutes, a mobile coronary care unit is in your driveway, with two EMTs and maybe a PA, and a satellite uplink to a cardiovascular disease center 80 miles away.
You hope the EKG is good and the Mylanta works, but, bad news, the EKG is bad and the pain is getting worse. They give you a cloned protein that dissolves clots that cost several billion to develop, while you're en route to the ER/helipad.
At the ER, your enzymes are run on an auto analyzer and your EKG is getting worse. They call the chopper.
You arrive at the CV center at 3:30 am. There, a team of cardiologists and technicians magically appears, and within 15 minutes it's clear you need a bypass.
Down the hall you go, where again, out of nowhere, a heart surgeon, CV anesthesiologist, pump technician, scrub nurses, float nurses, and surgical assistant appear.
As the sun rises, your pain is gone, your enzymes are falling, your tiny, minimally-invasive incision is closed with two band aids, and they're saying you can go home tomorrow,
Now, compared with 1968, all this stuff is new. And, it doesn't appear by magic.
The hospital that saved your ass is paying for all this stuff, paying millions and millions of dollars for it in fact, whether it was a bad dream, whether or not the Mylanta works, all so it would all be ready for you if you needed it.
The COST of the empire that Hill-Burton and Medicare have created is enormous. And that cost is spread out over aspirins, band aids, digital X-rays, and a bunch of other stuff that costs little or nothing.
How would YOU like for all that stuff to be paid for?
That happened to bill. The bill was around $6,000.
From this thread we have discovered that a CAT scan go from anywhere from $500 to $6K...
And banks are not charities. When they have customers default on their loans that means they must charge everyone else more for services.
If the bank loans someone $100,000 dollars and gets $40,000 back, the rest of its customers must be charged more to make up the difference. That or they bank goes out of business.
I realize they may have made some interest income in the few years the loan was in good standing, but the legal costs of the default will more than make up for that.
Never mind what I just said. LOL. I was posting on two different threads. The other one was about people who default on their mortgages. One poster thinks defaulting on the mortgage is just another option when home values go down.
Anyway I got confused.
You are right about them accepting less. They should. Even that is very high. But if you have no opportunity to negotiate the price before, you deserve the right to negotiate it after.
” $50 for an asprin”
The aspirin is $50 because of all the paperwork needed to procure it; store it; and keep records of it, etc.
That is due to everyone getting sued. The real answer is all the lawsuits that happen in medicine.
My last CT scan (with radioactive dye), was billed to my insurance for $5600. Being in the network, BC/BS paid $2600.
correction..BC/BS paid $3600
A CT Scan goes for whatever they can get people to pay.
Problem solved....
Oklahoma Doctors vs Obamacare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uPdkhMVdMQ
I think most on here would agree that, for the most part, most problems could be handled with very simple and efficient solutions. Too bad the clowns in DC can’t grasp that.
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