So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[LizzieMaine]

Somewhere I have an itemized bill for my appendectomy last year. I can't remember offhand the specifics, but I do know it was by far the most expensive toasted cheese sandwich and cup of Campbell's chicken noodle soup that I've ever had in my life.

 

[2jakes]

A ride on the ambulance to the hospital was $500 back in the last century.
The way things are going...I can’t afford to die, what with the cost of funerals.

I wonder If it’s cheaper to be stuffed and be placed somewhere in the entrance
to the Fedora Lounge.

You can prop me up next to the
"g.d. materfamilias”,
if that’s ok with her.

 

[2jakes]

Not seeing the light at the end of the EXIT!

(Hospital)

 

[tonyb]

A large part of the problem with healthcare here in the U.S. is the ridiculous mark-up on prices and costs. In 1977 my dad had surgery to replace one of his eardrums, and at some point after the surgery he was able to obtain an itemized list for medications and such used during his stay in the hospital. I don't remember all of the costs--too overwhelming--but I do recall they charged his insurance company $200 for two aspirin and $100 for a tongue depressor. Two hundred dollars for two aspirin. In 1977. I'd hate to see what they're overcharging these days.

Too many in the health care business (and it IS a business) are the moral equivalent of war profiteers. When I see what our household's insurer is billed for items that fall under the "durable medical equipment" heading, it becomes clear to me why that insurance coverage is so costly. If people had to pay these prices out of pocket, the vendors would make very few sales, simply because very few people have that kind of scratch.

 

[Bushman]

Not seeing the light at the end of the EXIT!

View attachment 82010
(Hospital, a few minutes ago!)

Heh, that picture is giving me some "Halloween II" vibes.

 

[Zombie_61]

Not seeing the light at the end of the EXIT!

View attachment 82010
(Hospital, a few minutes ago!)

That many exit signs in such close proximity can only mean one thing: "GET OUT!!!"

 

[2jakes]

That many exit signs in such close proximity can only mean one thing: "GET OUT!!!"

 

[Fading Fast]

Somewhere I have an itemized bill for my appendectomy last year. I can't remember offhand the specifics, but I do know it was by far the most expensive toasted cheese sandwich and cup of Campbell's chicken noodle soup that I've ever had in my life.

I had similar billing joy with my Kidney Stone one-day-in-the-hospital event last year.

Not only was the hospital bill a crazy blizzard of overpriced items, but to add to the obnoxiousness, there had to be, at least, five "separate" bills that came in over time (made me nervous to look at the mail for months afterwards) away from the "main" hospital bill despite my having never left the hospital or asking for any "special" or "extra" service.

From memory, those bills included a couple of different types of lab work (how was that not part of the hospital bill that included its own lab work), one from one of the doctors who looked at the MRI (I never saw that doctor) and something (memory fuzzy on this one) about some processing or documenting work.

And those "extra" bills were the hardest to get clarity on as the hospital claimed it wasn't them, but you couldn't easily find the source of them. That one day was the most expensive day of my life even after the several months of effort I put into reducing the bills afterwards. Those very hard and exhausting efforts - the system is designed to get you to just give up - saved 20-30%.

Oh, final knee to the groin, I have Obamacare, but (and I have no doubt this is designed into the insurance construct) my deductible wasn't reached (close but not there). How many people are like me and only go to the emergency room a few times in their life (I'm thankful for that), so you know the actuaries set the deductibles to not cover these, I'd bet, large number of people.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Too many in the health care business (and it IS a business) are the moral equivalent of war profiteers. When I see what our household's insurer is billed for items that fall under the "durable medical equipment" heading, it becomes clear to me why that insurance coverage is so costly. If people had to pay these prices out of pocket, the vendors would make very few sales, simply because very few people have that kind of scratch.

The American health care industry is the dirtiest stinking racket that a victimized humanity has ever allowed to exist. It's morally no better than a gangland protection racket, except the gangsters gave better service.

 

[Angus Forbes]

And yet, American health care is enormously better now than it was in 1948.

 

[2jakes]

And yet, American health care is enormously better now than it was in 1948.

Yes.
Also, I know that those darn vaccine
shots (needles) are less painful now
than 1948!
And nobody told me or did I read this somewhere..... I was there.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The current wholesale cost in the US of a dose of OPV is about twenty five cents. The cost to a patient today is in the area of fifty dollars. That dose was *free* in 1954. A filthy stinking immoral unconscionable racket. The conniving worms of the American Medical Association, whose lobbying efforts are more than any factor responsible for the morass we face today whenever we set foot in a hospital, are a shame and a blight on the human race, and a moral betrayal of every decent thing supposedly represented by their profession. If I believed in hell, I would be happy to see them rot in it.

 

[Angus Forbes]

I don't begrudge doctors' having upper-middle-class incomes (and that's what most have, rather than extravagantly higher). Medical training is frightfully expensive for the students and exceedingly difficult, even brutal. Their hours and responsibilities are horrible. New technology comes with crushing expense -- various kinds of scanners come to mind, also the cost of getting new drugs and treatments from the experimental lab to the patient. Fixed costs can be quite high even when incremental costs are low. Nurses, therapists, and most hospital administrators receive adequate but not astonishing salaries.

So where does the money go? We have vastly better care now, and it costs a lot more. I'll take that deal.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

In my experience most people who are wealthy, or semi-wealthy, have money because they don't want to spend it. There are the egotistical types who like to flaunt whatever wealth they might have (especially if it's all bluster and little substance), but most won't spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a luxury watch when a $50 Timex will do the job just as well.

AKA the $20,000 Billionaire

The last part sounds like my neighbour "Dr Strangelove" (I call him that because he bears a vague resemblance to the movie's title character). He has lots of money, in fact money is practically his religion, but he is so damn cheap -- some of the longtime neighbours have even suspected him of stealing from them. Instead of going on a cruise or taking a trip to Europe with his money (which I wish he would so I wouldn't have to see him for two weeks!) he's the neighbourhood busybody. For example, whenever there's work being done on one of the houses on our block he'll hang around and try to supervise the workers or act like a self-appointed building inspector -- a few years ago I had some work done on my house and the guy we hired had a disagreement with "Dr Strangelove" and then mysteriously some of his tools disappeared. I'm glad that my neighbourhood doesn't have an HOA because if it did he would be its president!

 

[LizzieMaine]

I underwent a complex, life-saving surgery in Quebec in 2004 -- at care and quality levels *better* than I could have gotten in my area of the US -- at *less than half the cost* I would have had to pay in the US.

AMA and health-care-industry propaganda move me only to spit on the ground. A corrupt, money-grubbing snakish industry run by corrupt, money-grubbing snakes. A schoolyard bully shaking down a kid for her milk money is more honorable.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Somewhere I have an itemized bill for my appendectomy last year. I can't remember offhand the specifics, but I do know it was by far the most expensive toasted cheese sandwich and cup of Campbell's chicken noodle soup that I've ever had in my life.

I often wonder how they come up with these prices. I suspect that they just pull the figures out of thin air (or somewhere else that I can't mention here). I wouldn't be surprised if the rule of thumb is to multiply by 100 or 1000 the first number that pops into their head. For example, Tylenol was $200 probably because someone in the billing department was thinking about how they still had two more hours to go till quitting time!

One sneaky thing that hospitals like to do is double bill, especially if the patient is deceased. They figure that the family, between grieving and being preoccupied with getting all the loose ends tied up, wouldn't notice. That happened when my Dad passed away, I got a bill for $900 from the hospital even though insurance had already taken care of it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I was a reporter I used to cover our local hospital, and it was pretty well obvious that the weasel-faced paskudnyak in the CEO's office had no need to fear the wolf at the door. He was well rewarded by his board for breaking the nurses' union and firing half the support staff. Said paskudnyak did meet his match, though, when he tried to screw my mother out of her workers' comp after she was injured on the job.

 

[2jakes]

I often wonder how they come up with these prices. I suspect that they just pull the figures out of thin air (or somewhere else that I can't mention here). I wouldn't be surprised if the rule of thumb is to multiply by 100 or 1000 the first number that pops into their head. For example, Tylenol was $200 probably because someone in the billing department was thinking about how they still had two more hours to go till quitting time!

One sneaky thing that hospitals like to do is double bill, especially if the patient is deceased. They figure that the family, between grieving and being preoccupied with getting all the loose ends tied up, wouldn't notice. That happened when my Dad passed away, I got a bill for $900 from the hospital even though insurance had already taken care of it.

I was born in my grandmother's bedroom
when doctors made "house calls".

The doc took one look at me and slapped
my father.

My dad put up with it because the fee was cheap.

Today....I can't afford to die.
The funeral costs would kill me! ?

 

[belfastboy]

I underwent a complex, life-saving surgery in Quebec in 2004 -- at care and quality levels *better* than I could have gotten in my area of the US -- at *less than half the cost* I would have had to pay in the US.

AMA and health-care-industry propaganda move me only to spit on the ground. A corrupt, money-grubbing snakish industry run by corrupt, money-grubbing snakes. A schoolyard bully shaking down a kid for her milk money is more honorable.

Using the latest data our "free" Canadian health care cost each taxpayer just a touch under $6000 per. And the if you look at the lengthy wait lists (and growing) you get to see how our governments try to cap costs by rationing health care. Our health care system is wonderful in theory only. It becomes much less wonderful when one becomes ill and must enter into the system. Being in the queue awaiting relief is not a lot of fun.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I waited six months for my surgery at a private hospital in Canada. I had no problem with that at all, it gave me time to arrange my affairs so I could pay the cost. Whatever inconveince I felt from the wait was more than counteracted by the relief I felt at not having to worry about paying twice as much.

I can't say enough about the quality of care, either. I was even able to get a nurse to run down to Schwartz's and get me a smoked meat sandwich when I couldn't stand the hospital food any longer.

Anyone who doesn't think health care is rationed in the US hasn't sat for four hours in an emergency room throwing up blood into a garbage can.