8/24/2004

TODAY’S IMPONDERABLE

Why does health care cost so much?

Posted by Mark @ 4:23 pm | | Permalink
This post is filed under: Politics

6 Comments

  1. Pray you guys don’t have to have a C-section.
    When we got the bill, I realized I should have been an anisthesiologist. 10 minutes of work and $900 bucks.

    Comment by Zygote — 8/24/2004 @ 5:41 pm

  2. Too late–we already know we are. Oh well, my health insurance is good . . .

    Comment by Mark Hasty — 8/24/2004 @ 5:47 pm

  3. We got our bill back — 4 nights in the hospital, gallons of pitocin, the head of OB/GYN and his minions for the forceps delivery, seven nurses, five gold rings… anyway, it was $18,000. Our cost, thanks to the stoploss in the insurance, was ~$750.

    Why was it so expensive? Well, $1500 a night for the room to start.

    Actually, the nice thing about a non-emergency C-section is that you’re looking at three nights in the hospital and some extra care, but you’ll be nowhere near what we had to pay, even with the gaggle of nurses and residents and doctors in the delivery room.

    Comment by dw — 8/24/2004 @ 6:59 pm

  4. Lots of reasons?

    Malpractice suits. Hospitals have to treat the uninsured poor for free. Price gouging by drug companies, malpractice insurance companies, and equipment manufacturers. Insurance fraud. Sweetheart deals that let hospitals negotiate prices and benefits with health insurance companies (while you don’t have that luxury).

    Largely, though, because there’s no control over how much gets charged. Supply and demand don’t factor in when people’s lives are on the line.

    Comment by Dave — 8/24/2004 @ 8:46 pm

  5. So what’s the best way to contain the costs? Who gets cut off first?

    Comment by Mark Hasty — 8/24/2004 @ 10:07 pm

  6. American HC is the best on the planet for anything acute, like a heart attack. It’s the long-term stuff that causes people trouble.

    And even in some of the single-payer or socialized countries like Canada and the UK, things are not rosy as far as quality of service. Actually, it can be downright bad. So there’s no panacea there in terms of a change.

    I think among the other reasons (and in addition those others have listed) is that people with health insurance had become divorced from the real costs of care, the billing practices of insurance companies force medical facilities to maintain a staff of people who just deal with the paperwork requirements, and the worry over lawsuits (justified or not) that cause physicians to order every test on the planet just to be sure.

    Comment by JammerJim — 8/25/2004 @ 8:09 am

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