What About Health Care?

Will a dollar buy more than a piece of bubble gum this time next year? Politicians sometimes resort to fear tactics but right about now, Joe Politician is just as afraid as Joe Citizen. An inside view of the economic crisis has the president and Congress actually working together on something. But...

Does their plan address the enormous amount of medical debt carried in this country?

A few weeks back, Suzanne, my friend and roommate, had to go to the emergency room with severe stomach pains. After staying overnight and having some tests done, the doctor gave her the okay to return home. Tests showed everything working well and the diagnosis was a form of food poisoning. Simple enough. The bill was sixteen thousand dollars.

Somewhere along the line, we've developed a health care bubble that I've not heard a word about during these woeful economic talks. Being that Suzanne has no insurance, she now owes over $16,000 to our local hospital. I'm not here to make a case for Suzanne. I'm here to say that this is a debt that will likely never be paid. So, who owns this debt? The hospital? Maybe they have already sold it to some firm searching for a future government bailout. Universal health care anyone?

Many of the inflated costs are aimed at the insurance companies. The price of insurance rises to cover these costs. The uninsured are then completely screwed.  Of course, this does not stop them from showing up at the emergency room and incurring more unaffordable debt. This drives the prices up further. And so on...

Comments

[hazel]

Even with insurance that we pay almost $900 a month for, a 10 day hospital stay for our newborn cost us almost $5000! Medical care really shouldn't be a BUSINESS.

[Josie]

Paul had a bit of compelling things to say on that in his book didn't he? It wasn't so long ago that people didn't have regular health insurance. I wonder what healthcare would cost today if competition had been allowed to flourish without primary care insurance or the frivolous lawsuits that have driven up medical practice insurance. Are we too far gone to go back?

[Mary Kitt-Neel]

Tell Suzanne that there are many of us in the same situation. One thing that both scares me and gives me hope that maybe the situation is dire enough that something will finally be done about it is that something like 75% of medical bankruptcies happen to people who have health insurance.

Here we are, Joe and Jane Average American, about to bail out Wall Street for $700 billion, because of lax regulation and greed, and yet, when it comes to providing even the most basic health care for all Americans, it's "Oh, no. We can't do that. It would be too expensive!" Grrr...

Suzanne, I hope you feel better soon, and please know that you're not alone.

[Matt Urdan]

I sympathize. I have a bill over $25 K that I refuse to pay. I was a work, standing on a chair to get a supply on a shelf that was way too high. I fell, hit my head, got knocked out for a minute.

My staff called 911. Ambulance came. I was coming around as the EMS guys arrived. They asked me if I wanted to go the hospital. I said no, I was fine. they asked me what I remembered. I didn't remember the fall. Guess why? Oh yeah, I hit my head kind of hard on the wall as I fell.

They persuaded me to go to the hospital to get checked out. My coworkers insisted that I go. OK, so I go, they take test after test after test. They won't let me leave. I'm getting pissed off. Why can't I go home? I'm fine.

The doctor finally comes in, before this, all I've seen are nurses. They're concerned about me. They think there's something wrong with my heart. My heart? Yeah, my heart. I had a fainting spell they can't explain. I passed out with no memorty of the incident. I told them I hit my head. Did they look at my head? Did they see the bump on my head? I ask to go.

They advise me not to go. They want to keep me overnight for observation. I tell them no. 4 AM, I get to leave. Try getting a cab in surburban Columbus Ohio at 4 AM. I get home by 6 AM. Next morning, I'm getting calls worker's comp. Place the workers comp claim. Blah, blah, blah.

A month later, the workers comp claim is denied. I'm stuck for a $25K bill because I fell, trying to reach supplies on a high shelf that the supplies never should have been stored on. Why? Because the dumbass doctor diagnosed the incident as syncope, or unexplained faintings due to a mal-functioning heart--which has nothing to do with any kind of accident at work.

I fell off a chair and hit my head.

Do you think I'm going to pay one penny on this claim? Not a chance. If doctors are so stupid they can't put 2 and 2 together and get 4; if a Workers comp case worker is so stupid she can't put 2 and 2 together and get 4, and if my former employer is so unethical that they don't pony up and pay the claim for conditions they caused; I'm not paying 1 penny. I don't care if it screws up my credit for the rest of my life. There's what's right and there's social injustice. The health care system is all screwed up--and in this case, the doctor was being overly cautious and wanted to rule out something that could have been potentially fatal within the next 24 hours because our society wants to scream to a lawyer and a jury at the first hint of malpractice. The doctor was covering her f*cking ass, and I ended up getting screwed to the tune of $25K for it.

That's what's wrong with our health care system. And costs are so high because 1. Doctors have to be extra cautious to avoid malpractice suits. 2. Malpractice insurance is so high. 3. Too many people can't afford legitiamate doctors bills, let alone trumped up ones like my $25K and Suzanne's 16K, so they don't get paid because they're outrageous and everyone else's bill is higher to cover bills like these that only exist because doctors are ordering unnecessary tests and procedures to cover their own asses.

It's not cynicism. It's the truth. Tell your friend she has my deepest sympathies.

[netta]

This is such a hot button topic for me. I won't go into details (or we'd be here all day) but I know way too many people with similar stories, including my own daughter. It's worse than a national disgrace -- a country with this much power, money and status and STILL can't take care of its own. I agree with the poster who cited the recent bailout -- the same thought occurred to me. You can bail out those fat cats, when people are dying in emergency rooms because with no insurance, they are shuffled to the back of the pack.

It reeks. Every single politician should hang their heads in shame, then get said heads out of their asses and fix it.

Gah.

[YummY!]

My husband and I agree that medical prices would begin to drop if insurance was done away with and everyone had to pay out of pocket. We're so tight for cash we can't afford the monthly deductible of insurance, so we're uninsured. I had surgery about 4 years ago now, and I'm still paying for it, a little along as we can afford to.

[Rachel S]

It's a circular problem. Medical prices are artificially inflated (care for a $20 Tylenol?) to cover the losses of unpaid medical bills, trying to suck more compensation out of the insurance companies to help cover unpaid bills. Insurance rates are jacked up into outrageousness so they cost more than anyone would even have to pay out-of-pocket for ordinary medical care (but you "have" to have it in case of a major medical emergency). Insurance companies are limiting levels of payment because of jacked up medical prices. More bills are going unpaid because the costs are so ridiculously inflated. And the medical providers and insurance companies are all taking their profit as well. If we actually were charged for the medical services provided at fair value, fewer bills would go unpaid, and more people would be able to afford the lower insurance cost. The whole system has been twisted into a profit game. I can't afford to have insurance because the premiums cost more in a month than I generally pay in a year for actual medical care. In case of emergency, I have to turn to the government for help. The problem with government coverage such as Medicaid is that it's treated like "free care," and it's not used judiciously, ie running to the emergency room, when a visit to a doctor's office is all that's needed, not taking care of one's own health, etc. Costs go up for the "program," so qualification standards get tougher. And on and on and on......

[Syarlilady]

USD16K for food poisoning?! Unbelievable. I agree with Hazel, healthcare shouldn't be a business.

[The Hawg]

It's a mess, isn't it?

Fortunately, Congress is working on the Small Business Health Options Program, which is designed to allow small businesses and the self-employed take advantage of the same "pooling" that corporations enjoy. If successful, that will reduce the price of health insurance and that's an altogether great thing.

Driving down overall costs of medical care is another matter entirely. The idea of tort reform is still relevant -- screw the damned lawyers to the wall and the cost of doing business in the medical industry SHOULD drop significantly.

Of course, people are always talking about nationalizing health care. Terrible idea as you just don't know what will go wrong. Case in point -- the feds had their filthy hands all over the financial market, and look what happened. Just go back to the Community Reinvestment Act pushed for by that lunkhead Carter and bear in mind that subprime lending was authorized through a law signed by that idiot Bush. Having a national policy of writing mortgages for people who probably shouldn't have had them turned out to be a disaster and we all know that the foreclosure mess kicked off the current rotten economy.

In other words, when the feds start tinkering around in the free market, this is the kind of mess we get.

Oh, and I wouldn't rush to give a dime to those banks that exploited lending laws as much as they could, either. This bailout business is downright awful.

[Kris]

If we'd get rid of the whole insurance scam things could get a little more back to normal.

[Surviving the Circus]

It's a disgrace. Apparently it's okay to embrace socialism when it benefits those with fat wallets - we can't let them down, can we? It's just not okay to embrace for the sake of those who are sick. Sad, sad, sad. Remember those stories of the good ole days when doctors bartered with their patients for services? Whatever happened to that kind of integrity, honor, compassion, and decency?

[Kellie]

Insurance used to be something that employers would offer because it cost them mere pennies on the dollar. Now, it seems that insurance is more of a "half-to" thing than a "want-to" thing. They need to make it more affordable for the everyday average Joe and Jane to be able to afford. Employers should not have to shoulder these huge insurance costs. No wonder more businesses are moving out over seas. Since health insurance is a need, it should be made affordable...period.

In other news... i'm still reeling over this 700 billion dollar bailout. Seriously... if I didn't think we'd end up in a second Great Depression, I would tell AIG and the other fat cats on Wall Street to suck it.

Great blog! I love reading it!

[nahummer]

Great point. The proposed bailout package does nothing to fix the source of the problem, regular people who can't pay their debts. Instead you have the typical Washington games, with Paulsen playing the fear card, McCain the excuse me, I have to go to Washington and look economically knowledgeable card and congressmen and women from both sides of the aisle literally falling over eachother to look more fiscally responsible. Imagine the good that $700 billion (for starters) could do if it was applied in a better way than throwing good money after bad.
www.theendisalwaysnear.blogspot.com

[Kristie]

Hey I have an award for you over at Lily's Licorice if you'd like to go take a look.