Reply #42: I've been where you were recently--hospital stay of 3+ days for hip replacement--

[mnhtnbb]

that generated a $37,000. bill--not including surgeon's fees. I've also been on the other side
as a hospital administrator required to develop budgets that met patient needs.

There is no doubt that our system is majorly messed up. Many other countries provide excellent
health care services--with better results than we do--for lower costs.

Just cutting costs--instituting controls as you suggest--is not going to solve the problem.
There are many services in the hospital that are not billing centers, but are necessary to run
the facility. Medical records, accounting, purchasing, dietary, information management, housekeeping, laundry, risk management, maintenance, biomedical engineering...I could go on and on. All the expense
of those departments has to be incorporated into the billing centers that provide patient services.

The other side, which you have mentioned, is the fact that many hospitals (often not the for-profit ones)
end up treating patients who have no resources. Their care is unreimbursed. The cost of providing that care is loaded onto the "paying" patients in the form of higher bills.

The whole system is totally out of balance--out of whack. For my money, I'd like to see single payer.
Everybody gets covered for some level of care. Take the insurance companies (and their profit margins)
out of the equation and there would be plenty of funds available to cover the uninsured. There wouldn't be a gazillion different billing forms required; there wouldn't be entire departments devoted to insurance
verification.

Power does not relinquish power without a fight. The insurance companies aren't going to walk away from their profitable business. I don't know the answer. I do know that simply instituting cost controls
at the point of service will not solve the problem.

I hope your recovery is going well.