Doris asks a good question (ploitics)

[tater]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

Sure, and getting a $2600.00 bill for one hour of ER time with one x-ray is way more sensible. Seems someone is making money.

Someone has to pay for those not paying. You'd get a bill like that at the University Hospital here—their collection rate is under 20% of what they bill. So they need to charge a lot to make up for dead beats.

Of course what the bill is has little to do with what would actually be paid. You bill $300, and the insurance sends a check for $170 and instead of dunning them, you say "thank you, come again."

That said, the facility fees are certainly a money maker. My wife waived a fee for a friend's son, and they still got an OR bill for several grand (insurance paid most of what was actually paid (less than the bill, be sure), presumably). She asked what my wife would have made, expecting it to be thousands and was surprised when she was told "Maybe $150 or $200." That was a emergency surgery, too. Hospital makes thousands, surgeon makes a couple hundred bucks. Note that her fee might have shown up on the bill as some multiple of that. It's bizarre, frankly.


tater

Someone has to pay for those not paying. You'd get a bill like that at the University Hospital here—their collection rate is under 20% of what they bill. So they need to charge a lot to make up for dead beats.

But since the Emergency Room is already paid for by the taxpayer and it already gets tax payers money specificly to pay for those who don't pay then how does that relate to his $2600 bill?
After all, how can they need to make up extra charges for those that don't pay when they are already getting paid for those that don't pay.

[tater]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

But since the Emergency Room is already paid for by the taxpayer and it already gets tax payers money specificly to pay for those who don't pay then how does that relate to his $2600 bill?
After all, how can they need to make up extra charges for those that don't pay when they are already getting paid for those that don't pay.

They don't get money to pay for those who cannot pay. They eat the loss.

This is the thing, the government CLAIMS they are paying for all this health care, but they actually pay the providers BELOW COST.

Let's say the new law made 100% of the people on medicaid or medicare. Universal care, yipee!

The problem is that since they pay below the cost of delivery, the docs/hospital loses money the more patients they see. The more they see, the more they lose.

The only way to fix this is to make the government programs pay more, and then to reduce government cost, they need to ration care. Basically less aggressive care for terminal illness (where 90% of lifetime medical costs go).

The trouble is that US patients want the docs to throw everything but the kitchen sink at THEIR cancer, they only care about saving money when it's someone else. Course this expense buys us better care. The US death rate to common cancers as a function of incidence is FAR lower than europe (particularly the UK). (the deaths per 100,000 pop at large are basically identical, but the US incidence is about twice as high)

My wife treats everyone the same, BTW, not attention to insurance, etc. It sucks that for the great care she delivers, my family actually pays money out of pocket as charity to them, and we cannot even write it off.