My mother was feeling pain in her chest and elsewhere.
When the pain did not go away, my sister, who is a physician, took my mother to the hospital, because they were afraid she might be
having a heart attack.
She was there for one day.
The bill is for more than $11,318, for one day.
I imagine more bills are to follow from the various physicians. For example, on the bill is a charge for the MRI, but possibly the
charge for the doctor reading the MRI is still to come.
The bill has one charge after another for $220, $265, $384 and so on, which add up.
There are big charges like $1,470 for observation, which I believe is a way of keeping the charges down by not admitting her as an
overnight patient. Think they say she was only there for 23 hours so they can call it observation instead of charging her for a
stay.
Emer dept level 5 for $2,365.
MRI T-spine w/o cont for $1,917.75.
EKG tracing only for $500, three times for $1,500.
There is no explanation of what these things are, why they were done or what they found out. A little web research would probably
turn up some detail about each one, but I do not feel like doing that right now.
What was wrong with my mother?
Back spasms.
There is a Medicare Op Cy of -$9,543.60, which appears to be a reduction of the charges because of Medicare.
Mcare Op Nd Pmt of $918.93 appears to be what Medicare paid.
There is a B C Payment ND of $293.47, which must be the Blue Cross payment.
There is an Abn Wo Op of -$485.75 which looks to be some other reduction.
The hospital was paid a total of $1,212.40, other than from my mother.
That made the total adjustments -$10,029.35, so my mother only paid $76.25 of this particular bill.
The hospital bill then was $1,212.40 plus $76.25, which is $1,288.65.
This is disturbing, for many reasons.
First, they should just charge you the $1,288.65, if that is the bill.
Second, $1,288.65 is a lot for back spasms, even if they did do tests to rule out other stuff.
The problem is the medical field does not do business with their patients. They service their patients, but do business with
insurance companies.
If the medical field did business with their patients, they could only charge what their patients could afford to pay.
Other businesses operate that way. The car industry sells cars with $250,000 worth of parts for $15,000. They figured out how to do
it.
The computer industry figured out how to put a super computer on everyone's desk for $500.
The power industry figured out how to wire up the entire country and deliver energy to everyone's house for a few hundred dollars a
month.
The medical industry should be able to figure out how to do an EKG for under $500? The auto industry plugs a few sensors into a car
and does diagnostics for $50. What is the difference? Put some sensors on your body and run a computer program. It could tell you a
lot of information.
Other industries have competitive forces driving prices down.
The medical industry is like a scam. Everything is obfusticated. The target of the scam, the patient, is preyed on through their
vulnerabilites. The scam is driven by fear, fear of bankruptcy and fear of illness.
This is a sneaky way to get the maximum money out of people by lawyers, insurance companies, the medical industry and politicians.
It is not that they do not have valuable services to provide, but the way many of those services are provided in regards to today's
medical industry is to me a lot like a moving company scam.
They terrify you with a bill of $11,318. Obviously no normal person can pay that. Therefore you must have insurance. Now you are out
of the equation and the lawyers, insurance companies, medical industry and politicians decide how to divide up your money.
The solution is to get rid of insurance for most things and let the medical industry deal directly with their patients for normal
medical care. They will figure out how to charge what people can afford.
Once we do that, then there are three other things to deal with:
1. People who cannot afford to pay for normal medical care.
2. Large costs that are likely to affect a large percentage of people, such as end-of-life care.
3. Extreme costs that are likely to affect only a few people, such as trauma or rare diseases.
4. Liability lawsuits
By shrinking the healthcare problems to these four areas, the problem becomes more manageable and solutions easy to find. There are
food stamps. There could be healthcare stamps.
End-of-life care could be part of a normal life insurance policy. Instead of getting paid when you die, you get paid when you need
end-of-life care.
Extreme costs are what insurance is for.
The government involvement could be a safety net for those that fall through.
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