Six weeks ago I had a fairly minor surgery as an outpatient at a local hospital. I was in the hospital altogether -- pre-op, operating room, and recovery room -- about five hours or less. Recently the hospitals bill for this service (which does not include the bills of the surgeon and the anesthesiologist, each of whom sends a separate bill) arrived in the mail: $24,187.99. Separately my insurance carrier sent me an itemized statement of the various charges the hospital made and the amounts it had paid, which shows that my own responsibility for paying the hospital amounts to $404.43 (which matches the hospitals own statement). This sort of thing, involving gigantic reductions in the providers top-line charges, first for the insurance carrier and then for the patient, is utterly routine. No doubt many of you have waltzed through these same dance steps. What you might well bear in mind, however, is that if I had no insurance, I would be legally responsible for the hospitals top-line charge. If I could not pay that amount, as many similarly placed people cannot, especially in cases where the amounts billed are vastly greater than they were in my case described here, I could expect to be assailed by collection agencies for the rest of my natural life. Of course, savvy patients know that in many cases they can negotiate large reductions in the providers top-line charge. Even then, however, the remaining amount often greatly exceeds the patients ability to pay. The majority of personal bankruptcy filings in the USA arise from peoples inability to pay medical bills. Any intelligent person who familiarizes himself with the financial details of the current U.S. health-service system quickly concludes that this fascistic monstrosity defies all sense and wreaks far-reaching devastation on the economy in general and on its individual victims in particular. Of course, it does enrich the privileged parties who occupy its commanding heights as well as many of the less exalted people who play various roles in its byzantine architecture.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 22:21:11 +0000
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