What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
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Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#2"The prices are high — even for things you can buy in a drugstore"
Reminds me of the brief hospital visit I had in Paraguay where I needed to have a friend or relative always with me because the hospital didn't stock anything. If ibuprofen, bandages, syringes, antibiotics, etc were needed, the hospital staff would tell me and I would have my friend or relative run across the street to buy the necessary supplies from one of the pharmacies so the doctor or nurse could treat me.
Cheap hospital bill, cheap pharmacy bill, pain in the butt for my friends and relatives.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#3I know $60 Ibuprofen can seem like a lot, but is anyone arguing that you're literally paying for only the pill(s) with that $60? Aren't you paying for the instant availability, the insurance that it's not expired (do they even expire? I really don't know), and confidence that your healthcare provider has signed off that XXX mg of Ibuprofen is a.) OK to have with your current medications and conditions and b.) sufficient to do the job? Isn't some of that cost the healthcare provider's expertise and service? Would it be better if they prescribed morphine and charged you a magnitude more when ibuprofen would have done the job?
I charge clients similarly. I overbid projects that I don't really want to do. If you want me to setup Wordpress for you, I'll charge you out the nose. Granted, you get to accept my fees before I ever send you a bill. It's not a perfect analogy.
> This is all due to the key fee I’ve been investigating this year: the ER facility fee. This is the fee that ERs charge for walking in the door and seeking care, something akin to a cover charge at a bar.
This seems absolutely reasonable to me, I wish I could charge a 'fill my email with RFPs' type fees. Walking into a waiting room, signing in and waiting is not nothing. You and your symptoms get evaluated and triaged. That takes expertise and know-how. The prices vary wildly because different hospitals experience different levels of demand, I imagine.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#4Reading this article and seeing all the startups sprouting in the field of health care and medicine tells me that there's still a lot more areas to innovate and disrupt in this industry.
One big issue though are that lobbyists who wanted to keep prices high - to squeeze in as much profit as they can out of these. Drugs, Antibiotics, Procedures, Medical Professionals. I know it would be far-fetched to standardize and at least provide some level of transparency across all facets of operation in this field, but that would be a good start.
Analyze the data, and find ways where things can be improved incrementally.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#5I'm not an advocate of government paid health care, but hospitals and medical providers should see that this train is coming and if they don't become more transparent it's going to be forced upon them.
I don't have a problem with ER care being more expensive -- that isn't necessarily unreasonable when you are getting care in an expensive facility open 24x7, fitted out with equipment to handle any possible medical emergency, and staffed with highly educated people who make a lot of money. But it is unfair to have no idea what costs you are facing and whether any of those costs are out of network on your insurance.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#6Reading this article and seeing all the startups sprouting in the field of health care and medicine tells me that there's still a lot more areas to innovate and disrupt in this industry. One big issue though are that lobbyists who wanted to keep prices high - to squeeze in as much profit as they can out of these. Drugs, Antibiotics, Procedures, Medical Professionals. I know it would be far-fetched to standardize and…
One way to disrupt the industry might be to have everyone be in one giant insurance pool, perhaps paid for via taxes, and then give everyone access to health care via some kind of non-profit entity.
Sounds crazy, right?
It worked well for my family and I during the many years I spent in Italy, which has health care costs that are something like half of what they are in the US in terms of GDP.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#7Despite the fact that in my opinion this could be fixed by Universal Healthcare I'm left wondering: how is it legal to be billed these insane amounts of money without even getting a quote beforehand? Like just waiting in the ER is worth more than buying a first class airplane ticket and getting treated in another country.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#8I know $60 Ibuprofen can seem like a lot, but is anyone arguing that you're literally paying for only the pill(s) with that $60? Aren't you paying for the instant availability, the insurance that it's not expired (do they even expire? I really don't know), and confidence that your healthcare provider has signed off that XXX mg of Ibuprofen is a.) OK to have with your current medications and conditions and b.) suffici…
> I charge clients similarly. I overbid projects that I don't really want to do. If you want me to setup Wordpress for you, I'll charge you out the nose. Granted, you get to accept my fees before I ever send you a bill. It's not a perfect analogy.
One can always forgo setting up WordPress, which is not always the case with healthcare.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#9Reading this article and seeing all the startups sprouting in the field of health care and medicine tells me that there's still a lot more areas to innovate and disrupt in this industry. One big issue though are that lobbyists who wanted to keep prices high - to squeeze in as much profit as they can out of these. Drugs, Antibiotics, Procedures, Medical Professionals. I know it would be far-fetched to standardize and…
All this value being captured by middlemen “sprouting” up could also simply mean more money out of the pockets of healthcare customers, who already are going bankrupt paying for all of this inefficiency. The US healthcare industry is a raging river of money coming directly out of the wallets of consumers who have little choice. Not surprising that it attracts middlemen with spoons ready to dip into the river.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#10Health care is the only industry where the felony laws regarding up front pricing aren't enforced. It was allowed to become a twisted regulatory nightmare where the laws were written by the industry itself utilizing kneejerk methods to obtain profit at the cost of systemic corruption.