My Left Foot
On Thursday, I took a nasty tumble and twisted my ankle so badly that blood vessels broke. My left foot ballooned with blood and then turned purple and black. It was quite painful. But I decided not to go to the doctor, because I didn't break any bones and I was betting that my body would self-heal. I wrapped my foot in bandages and took aspirin to thin my blood to prevent blood clots. I'm no longer limping quite so badly, and I'm thinking in a few days I should be back to normal.
About twenty years ago, I collapsed at work-- a syncope. I paid $50 for the trip to the emergency room. My son last year went to the emergency room when he had trouble breathing. We paid almost $4,000 for that visit. What accounts for that startling difference in cost?
No one has hymned the praises of capitalism louder than I have. But it is clear that we have a problem with our health system, when our first instinct is not to get professional medical help but to self-medicate. I buy my own insurance, but even with company insurance, there are expensive deductibles. What I see is a collusion between insurance companies and health providers, forcing a continual upward pressure on price, so that health care is rationed by price and the ability for others pay those prices.
As you enter a hospital under an insurance plan, an "insurance optimization specialist" is there to see that you die or are released expeditiously. Meanwhile, hospital management especially in the emergency room try to see if they can detect add on goods and services, much like a crooked car mechanic would do. Whether it is an ache in the ark or a squeak in the axle, the effect is the same: the ignorant but trusting consumer will pay what she or he is asked to pay until the consumer runs out of money.
What is animating this upward price pressure is in my opinion the results of massive law suits against incompetent doctors. That is why tort reform with caps on awards must be an indespensible aprt of any kind of health plan. Howver, since most congresmen are lawyers, I don't see that happening.
Unlike most other goods and services within the market place, there is little pricing information available to the consumer. It is somewhat like going into a grocery stores and filling up your shopping cart with food, but only finding out at the checkout counter whether or not six ears of corn cost one dollar or one hundred dollars.
There must be a better way.
About twenty years ago, I collapsed at work-- a syncope. I paid $50 for the trip to the emergency room. My son last year went to the emergency room when he had trouble breathing. We paid almost $4,000 for that visit. What accounts for that startling difference in cost?
No one has hymned the praises of capitalism louder than I have. But it is clear that we have a problem with our health system, when our first instinct is not to get professional medical help but to self-medicate. I buy my own insurance, but even with company insurance, there are expensive deductibles. What I see is a collusion between insurance companies and health providers, forcing a continual upward pressure on price, so that health care is rationed by price and the ability for others pay those prices.
As you enter a hospital under an insurance plan, an "insurance optimization specialist" is there to see that you die or are released expeditiously. Meanwhile, hospital management especially in the emergency room try to see if they can detect add on goods and services, much like a crooked car mechanic would do. Whether it is an ache in the ark or a squeak in the axle, the effect is the same: the ignorant but trusting consumer will pay what she or he is asked to pay until the consumer runs out of money.
What is animating this upward price pressure is in my opinion the results of massive law suits against incompetent doctors. That is why tort reform with caps on awards must be an indespensible aprt of any kind of health plan. Howver, since most congresmen are lawyers, I don't see that happening.
Unlike most other goods and services within the market place, there is little pricing information available to the consumer. It is somewhat like going into a grocery stores and filling up your shopping cart with food, but only finding out at the checkout counter whether or not six ears of corn cost one dollar or one hundred dollars.
There must be a better way.
Labels: health plan
posted by My Mall and News at
7:50 PM
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