Posted by bad_luck on 11/19/2015 2:24:00 PM (view original):
Or health insurers can stay in business by leveraging hospitals into lower health care costs. Which would be a good thing. Out of control costs are a real problem.

Posted by moy23 on 11/19/2015 2:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/19/2015 2:24:00 PM (view original):
Or health insurers can stay in business by leveraging hospitals into lower health care costs. Which would be a good thing. Out of control costs are a real problem.

Hospitals are running as lean as they can already.... They are going out of business because they can't effectively operate on Medicare/Medicaid margins. Most hospitals are not-for-profit.... It's not like they are trying to line their pockets with high costs. What they end up doing is utilizing less employees to do more work which can lead to unsafe assignments. Just ask any nurse..... Oh and while you are at it ask them how bad their benefits have gotten over the last 4 years. It's BAD!

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. 

On the second page of the bill, the markups got bolder. Recchi was charged $13,702 for “1 RITUXIMAB INJ 660 MG.” That’s an injection of 660 mg of a cancer wonder drug called Rituxan. The average price paid by all hospitals for this dose is about $4,000, but MD Anderson probably gets a volume discount that would make its cost $3,000 to $3,500. That means the nonprofit cancer center’s paid-in-advance markup on Recchi’s lifesaving shot would be about 400%.

And in our largest cities, the system offers lavish paychecks even to midlevel hospital managers, like the 14 administrators at New York City’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who are paid over $500,000 a year, including six who make over $1 million.

One night last summer at her home near Stamford, Conn., a 64-year-old former sales clerk whom I’ll call Janice S. felt chest pains. She was taken four miles by ambulance to the emergency room at Stamford Hospital, officially a nonprofit institution. After about three hours of tests and some brief encounters with a doctor, she was told she had indigestion and sent home. That was the good news.

 

The bad news was the bill: $995 for the ambulance ride, $3,000 for the doctors and $17,000 for the hospital — in sum, $21,000 for a false alarm.

Steve H.’s bill for his day at Mercy contained all the usual and customary overcharges. One item was “MARKER SKIN REG TIP RULER” for $3. That’s the marking pen, presumably reusable, that marked the place on Steve H.’s back where the incision was to go. Six lines down, there was “STRAP OR TABLE 8X27 IN” for $31. That’s the strap used to hold Steve H. onto the operating table. Just below that was “BLNKT WARM UPPER BDY 42268” for $32. That’s a blanket used to keep surgery patients warm. It is, of course, reusable, and it’s available new on eBay for $13. Four lines down there’s “GOWN SURG ULTRA XLG 95121” for $39, which is the gown the surgeon wore. Thirty of them can be bought online for $180. Neither Medicare nor any large insurance company would pay a hospital separately for those straps or the surgeon’s gown; that’s all supposed to come with the facility fee paid to the hospital, which in this case was $6,289.

Posted by moy23 on 11/19/2015 2:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/19/2015 2:24:00 PM (view original):
Or health insurers can stay in business by leveraging hospitals into lower health care costs. Which would be a good thing. Out of control costs are a real problem.

Hospitals are running as lean as they can already.... They are going out of business because they can't effectively operate on Medicare/Medicaid margins. Most hospitals are not-for-profit.... It's not like they are trying to line their pockets with high costs. What they end up doing is utilizing less employees to do more work which can lead to unsafe assignments. Just ask any nurse..... Oh and while you are at it ask them how bad their benefits have gotten over the last 4 years. It's BAD!

Posted by bad_luck on 11/19/2015 3:00:00 PM (view original):

Posted by moy23 on 11/19/2015 2:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/19/2015 2:24:00 PM (view original):
Or health insurers can stay in business by leveraging hospitals into lower health care costs. Which would be a good thing. Out of control costs are a real problem.

Hospitals are running as lean as they can already.... They are going out of business because they can't effectively operate on Medicare/Medicaid margins. Most hospitals are not-for-profit.... It's not like they are trying to line their pockets with high costs. What they end up doing is utilizing less employees to do more work which can lead to unsafe assignments. Just ask any nurse..... Oh and while you are at it ask them how bad their benefits have gotten over the last 4 years. It's BAD!

You're wrong. They pad the **** out of the bills. Individuals are essentially powerless to stop it. The only actor in this mess with any leverage other than the government is the health insurance companies.

Posted by bad_luck on 11/19/2015 3:59:00 PM (view original):
There is so much overhead, the heads of non-profit hospitals make over $1 million a year. Must be tough getting by on such a tight budget. 

It seems like your theory is that the cost of healthcare isn't a problem, is that correct?