If you haven't read this Time article about how the medical providers gouge us you should

[NNN0LHI]

Read every word.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/


Health Insurance
Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us


1. Routine Care, Unforgettable Bills

When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanie’s father had been treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.

Because Stephanie and her husband had recently started their own small technology business, they were unable to buy comprehensive health insurance. For $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, they had been able to get only a policy that covered just $2,000 per day of any hospital costs. “We don’t take that kind of discount insurance,” said the woman at MD Anderson when Stephanie called to make an appointment for Sean.

Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance. Stephanie got her mother to write her a check. “You do anything you can in a situation like that,” she says. The Recchis flew to Houston, leaving Stephanie’s mother to care for their two teenage children.

About a week later, Stephanie had to ask her mother for $35,000 more so Sean could begin the treatment the doctors had decided was urgent. His condition had worsened rapidly since he had arrived in Houston. He was “sweating and shaking with chills and pains,” Stephanie recalls. “He had a large mass in his chest that was … growing. He was panicked.”

[Ilsa]

1. A friend's mother died from cancer after

treatment at MDA, and they kept calling my friend requesting payment of thousands in medical bills not covered by her secondary insurance and Medicare. The lady died broke, but they threatened to sure my friend for payment, who had no obligation to pay her mother's bills. They had collected the vast majority of billings, but wanted more.

Honestly, I don't think I'd go to MD Anderson unless I had no other choice.

[spanone]

2. the rich live, the poor die....that's america.

your cancer is profit.

[hedgehog]

3. " the nonprofit cancer center’s paid-in-advance markup... would be about 400%."

"Cancer therapy, prevention, education, and research are costly endeavors demanding conscientious stewardship; however, financial considerations should not dictate the quality of care offered to each patient."

Code of Ethics

http://www.mdanderson.org/about-us/code-of-ethics/index.html

[jsr]

4. The oncologist's creed: "There's a gold mine in them cancer patients"

Milk them dry while they're alive, make sure they're bankrupt when they die.

[eridani]

5. Comment by Don McCanne of PNHP

Steven Brill's TIME article, "Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us," seems to be awakening those who have, until now, accepted the very high prices of health care as an inevitability for having a technologically advanced health care system here in the United States.

In his 36 page article - which will surely be required reading in many health policy courses - Brill makes it clear that we no longer need to take the "bitter pill" of medical bills that are killing us. Clearly, Medicare already has several tools to control costs and has the potential for further improving value in the nation's health care purchasing.

At the end of his article, Brill seems to be advancing a non sequitur when he writes, "The real issue isn't whether we have a single payer or multiple payers. It's whether whoever pays has a fair chance in a fair market... We don't have to scrap our system and aren't likely to." This certainly does not follow from what he had to say as the central theme of his article.

He then recommends some tired or inadequate remedies that would have very little impact on the problems that we face in health care. What is ironic is that he has built a tremendous case for the logical solution - an improved Medicare for all - and then he seems to dismiss it. You cannot read his article and escape the conclusion that a single payer national health program is an absolute imperative, that is, if we really do want affordable care for everyone.

Download this article (the full 36 pages is available for free at the following link), and share it with others. But put a Post-it note on it that states: WARNING! For the health of our nation, ignore the section at the end titled "Changing Our Choices" (that's the tired remedies section), but concentrate on what an improved Medicare system could do for all of us. http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/

[HiPointDem]

6. criminal, & run by corporate criminals.

[pecwae]

7. Long, but very informative.

And it isn't just the 'cancer industry' that's big business. The author touched on the gross inflation of low cost items billed by hospitals. I went through this myself last year with a bill I thought was out of line even after insurance payments. After examining my bill and looking up items online I found costs for Tylenol, gauze pads and so on marked up as much as 700% over retail. If the hospital had given me a list of supplies needed prior to surgery I could have brought them with me at considerable savings.

[mainer]

8. Astonishing. I've heard rumors of mob-controlled hospitals.

Years ago, I spoke to a doctor who had left New Orleans because he was fed up with "mob-controlled" hospitals in the city. He told me that organized crime had moved into hospitals across the south, and they were funneling money into their pockets. I thought he had to be exaggerating. Now I wonder.

These profits are going somewhere. Is organized crime adjusting the "chargemaster" to inflate prices?

I've worked in health care, and I didn't know about "the charge master."

[99Forever]

9. You understand that ...

.. no one that actually COULD do something about this blatant inhumanity WILL, don't you?

Please die quickly, quietly, and out of sight.

[Puzzledtraveller]

10. My mouth dropped at the income the family had

and the wifes parents. Not that it invalidates the point, just saying, wow.

[mainer]

11. Kick. Because this issue is so important.

And it explains why universal Medicare would be the single best way to wrestle down health care costs.

Hospital CEOs making 4 million bucks a year? "Nonprofit" hospitals averaging 12 percent profits? Where are those profits going, into the pockets of organized crime?

[One_Life_To_Give]

12. Subsidizing Medicare?

If as a ratio of GDP we would pay $2Trillion under a Canadian or European system while currently Medicare & Medicaid combined only pay $800Billion or 40% of healthcare. Do we think Canadians who would meet US guidelines for Medicare/Medicaid would only consume 40% of their healthcare bills?

Charging the poorest of us exorbitant rates for health care is a piss poor way for Government to Tax and provide for healthcare in our senior and disabled population. Income tax would be far more equitable not to mention progressive.