Diagnosis: Insufficient Outrage
By H. GILBERT WELCH, NYT
HANOVER, N.H. — RECENT revelations should lead those of us involved in America’s health care system to ask a hard question about our business: At what point does it become a crime?
I’m not talking about a violation of federal or state statutes, like Medicare or Medicaid fraud, although crime in that sense definitely exists. I’m talking instead about the violation of an ethical standard, of the very “calling” of medicine.
Medical care is intended to help people, not enrich providers. But the way prices are rising, it’s beginning to look less like help than like highway robbery. And the providers — hospitals, doctors, universities, pharmaceutical companies and device manufactures — are the ones benefiting.
A number of publications — including this one — have recently published big reports on the exorbitant cost of American health care. In March, Time magazine ran a cover story exposing outrageous hospital prices, from $108 for a tube of bacitracin — the ointment my mother put on the scrapes I got as a kid and that costs $5 at CVS — to $21,000 for a three-hour emergency room evaluation for chest pain caused by indigestion.
(More here.)
HANOVER, N.H. — RECENT revelations should lead those of us involved in America’s health care system to ask a hard question about our business: At what point does it become a crime?
I’m not talking about a violation of federal or state statutes, like Medicare or Medicaid fraud, although crime in that sense definitely exists. I’m talking instead about the violation of an ethical standard, of the very “calling” of medicine.
Medical care is intended to help people, not enrich providers. But the way prices are rising, it’s beginning to look less like help than like highway robbery. And the providers — hospitals, doctors, universities, pharmaceutical companies and device manufactures — are the ones benefiting.
A number of publications — including this one — have recently published big reports on the exorbitant cost of American health care. In March, Time magazine ran a cover story exposing outrageous hospital prices, from $108 for a tube of bacitracin — the ointment my mother put on the scrapes I got as a kid and that costs $5 at CVS — to $21,000 for a three-hour emergency room evaluation for chest pain caused by indigestion.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
1 Comments:
One aspect that may be missing in this discussion is the effect of locality.
The Brill Bitter Pill article in Time and HHS reports show that the same procedure can have vastly different prices across the country ... but what are we to do in the local area when there may not be any other choice ?
I wrote about a recent experience ... the medical device cost was invoiced for $2,100 yet I was able to find that it could have been obtained on the open market for $209 ... of course, that is all after the procedure was completed, but the real problem is that there was no one else in the Mankato area who performed that procedure ... of sure, I could have driven to Owatonna, Austin, or Red Wing but since they all operate under the same business entity, I would have paid the same price.
They say that the only two guaranteed things in life are death and taxes ...
well, we know that taxes for corporations are going down, down, down as corporations paid 15.3% in 2008, 13% in 2009 and only 12/6% in 2010 !
IMO, it is time to rephrase that -- the only two guaranteed things in life are death and outrage over medical bills.
Post a Comment
<< Home