The Tyranny of Medical Bills in America

[tom b]

My nephew had this major medical emergency. The local hospital couldn't help, the regional hospital couldn't help. He was flown to a major hospital, they couldn't help. He was helicoptered to a world class children's hospital that saved his life. The cost, nothing!

Socialised medicine, thank god!

Medicare in Australia is 1.5% of my taxes.

Cheers,

[Isaac]

It cost us a co-pay of $15 or $20.

Don't you pay health insurance premiums? 

I hear in Canada,  you can wait months until they approve an mri.

When you say "approve an mri" that seems to be an expression of your political concerns.

What good is cheap if you can't get it when you need it?

Now that is an interesting question: MRI is a diagnostic tool; MRI is not the only diagnostic tool.

"My research at the Acute Knee Injury Clinic in Calgary suggests similar waste occurs in diagnosing knee injuries. This work found almost two-thirds of the knee-injured patients who had an MRI could have been accurately diagnosed using other more readily available and significantly less expensive techniques and tools."

"Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France … Providers largely charge what they can get away with, often offering different prices to different insurers, and an even higher price to the uninsured."

[michael]

I am a Canadian.

Over the past 3 years I have had 2 MRIs, 3 CT scans and 2 PET scans.

Average wait times (2 – 8 days). (These were non-emergency, and for diagnostic purposes).

Total cost.

$0.

The myths about the Canadian health care system that are promulgated in the U.S. are risible.

Michael

[NancyP]

OK, all you relevance-cravers - have you seen or do you know about the specialized radiology monitors used for diagnostic imaging? They are pretty amazing. Even mammography has switched to digital, and mammography had the most subtle findings on silver halide film. So some of the radiology bill is to pay for "monitors to die for".

Do I earn my tea? (I am a tea drinker, though I am American...)

[Rob C]

OK, all you relevance-cravers - have you seen or do you know about the specialized radiology monitors used for diagnostic imaging? They are pretty amazing. Even mammography has switched to digital, and mammography had the most subtle findings on silver halide film. So some of the radiology bill is to pay for "monitors to die for".

Do I earn my tea? (I am a tea drinker, though I am American...)

Darjeeling or Nilgiri? With or without milk? (I already assume you never use sugar.)

;-)

Rob C

[RSL]

I am a Canadian.

Over the past 3 years I have had 2 MRIs, 3 CT scans and 2 PET scans.

Average wait times (2 – 8 days). (These were non-emergency, and for diagnostic purposes).

Total cost.

$0.

The myths about the Canadian health care system that are promulgated in the U.S. are risible.

Michael

No, Michael, total cost wasn't $0. What you mean is you didn't have to pay on the spot out of pocket. But you and your neighbors paid through your taxes. I'm not knocking it. I'm just pointing out that costs don't just disappear.

[amolitor]

The questions aren't really about paying versus not.

The questions are:

can the government run a health care system better than a bunch of private insurance companies and their colleagues?
are additional costs of an alternate system, if any, worth it for increased simplicity and equality of access to health care?

While governments are pretty amazingly bad at running things, the US health care industry seems to be trying quite hard to top the government standard for Completely Bolluxed Up, so the first question does not strike me as having an obvious answer.

The second one's answer depends a lot on who you are. You're weighing unknown costs against personal values.

Anyone who claims that the answers are obvious here is just wrong.

[Colorado David]

What no one has addressed is that the original trolling post is completely meaningless. There is no verifiable data to link those crops of bills to anything real. But even as worthless as the post is, look at the responses it's gotten. I like to visit Lula to read and post about photography.

[amolitor]

Once again, this is the Coffee Corner. There are 32 other subforums which are all entirely about photography.

Also, while the original bills may or may not accurately reflect anything, there's really no question that medical bills can and frequently are astronomical.

[RSL]

While governments are pretty amazingly bad at running things, the US health care industry seems to be trying quite hard to top the government standard for Completely Bolluxed Up, so the first question does not strike me as having an obvious answer.

Right, Andrew. But have you ever gone in for a physical or some small problem and watched what your doctor has to do? He no longer has time to relate to you. He has to sit there with a laptop and satisfy government requirements. That's first priority. You come second. But not by his choice. To add to the absurd situation, medical school doesn't teach typing, so the poor guy is sitting there diddling on the keyboard with two fingers.

[amolitor]

Oh, it's awful. You wait and wait and wait and some nurse comes in and does all the work and then the doctor comes in and hurriedly re-does part of the work, inattentively.

It's my impression that this is due to the profit motive, however. Doctors are scheduled in increasingly smaller increments, because the incredible layered structure of corporations that wish to extract revenue from this guy desire to extract more revenue.

There are also government requirement in play, adding to the bureaucratic loads, but it's not clear to me that this specifically affects the exceedingly brief doctor visit. Where those his ME is in moving medical records around. I understand that there are privacy concerns for some people, but golly, if I could opt out of HIPPA and simply have my family's medical records published on a billboard, I'd be all over that.

[Isaac]

But even as worthless as the post is, look at the responses it's gotten. I like to visit Lula to read and post about photography.

Evidently there are people who will accept any excuse to opine about US healthcare and there are people who will look upon that with some surprise, and some of those same people may also like to opine about photography.

It's a buffet. Partake of whatever suits your tastes.

[Colorado David]

Where is the OP? He's disappeared except for one additional trolling post.

[michael]

No, Michael, total cost wasn't $0. What you mean is you didn't have to pay on the spot out of pocket. But you and your neighbors paid through your taxes. I'm not knocking it. I'm just pointing out that costs don't just disappear.

I should have written ... "out of pocket costs". Nothing costs $0.

Canada does pretty well with medical costs. It's currently about 11% of GDP, lower than some developed countries with national systems (actually, ours is provincial), and higher than a few. In the U.S. I understand that it's about 17% of GDP, but with millions of people not covered. Our coverage is universal.

Not to belabour the point, but the arguments against universal health care ring hollow to me. In the 19th century some argued against universal primary and then secondary education. Now we would judge such a position is untenable. An educated population benefits everyone. Similarly a healthy population.

For those who want a simple primer in how the Canadian national health system works, this Wikipedia article is a good start.

Michael

[Isaac]

The questions are…

The question is -- Do consumers accept that healthcare provision is not a monopoly just because industry lobbyists say so again and again?

Whether healthcare is provided by for-profit corporations, non-profits or governments; without price transparency, or a reasonable expectation that consumers are in any position to price-shop while their life is at risk, healthcare provision is effectively a monopoly.

Whether healthcare is provided by for-profit corporations, non-profits or governments; a monopoly requires external regulators to promote quality and limit costs.

[Alan Klein]

The question is -- Do consumers accept that healthcare provision is not a monopoly just because industry lobbyists say so again and again?

Whether healthcare is provided by for-profit corporations, non-profits or governments; without price transparency, or a reasonable expectation that consumers are in any position to price-shop while their life is at risk, healthcare provision is effectively a monopoly.

Whether healthcare is provided by for-profit corporations, non-profits or governments; a monopoly requires external regulators to promote quality and limit costs.

The dark, dirty secret is Obama along with the Democrats went to bed with the insurance companies.  They supported Obamacare because it created a law where everyone has to pay for insurance who is not on Medicare (over age 65).  So this increased the number of customers for the insurance companies who have now increased and will continue to increase the cost for insurance so the public will pay more for their health care then they would have before the law.   For example, my cousin and her husband (who are both 63) are now paying $19,000 for health insurance.  That high price came around only in last couple of years.

Can you imagine a law that required everyone to buy a camera?  It could be a P&S or a DSLR, but you had to get one.  What would happen to the quantity of cameras sold every year by Nikon, Canon, etc?  What do you think would happen to the prices?  The insurance companies are going to clean up.

[amolitor]

That's not a secret. It's common knowledge. Just a matter of the historical record, though, obamacare was lifted pretty much verbatim from an idea the Republicans had floated a short time before.

So, one might wish to take a little care with casting aspersions.

As a consumer of obamacare, I can say that I wish it was a better system.

[RSL]

I should have written ... "out of pocket costs". Nothing costs $0.

Canada does pretty well with medical costs. It's currently about 11% of GDP, lower than some developed countries with national systems (actually, ours is provincial), and higher than a few. In the U.S. I understand that it's about 17% of GDP, but with millions of people not covered. Our coverage is universal.

Not to belabour the point, but the arguments against universal health care ring hollow to me. In the 19th century some argued against universal primary and then secondary education. Now we would judge such a position is untenable. An educated population benefits everyone. Similarly a healthy population.

For those who want a simple primer in how the Canadian national health system works, this Wikipedia article is a good start.

Michael

I hear you, Michael, but I've also heard the Canadian snowbirds who've been coming down to Florida over the past 25 years we've been snowbirds there from Colorado. Many of them have a very different attitude than you have about the situation. For now I'll reserve judgment and wait for more data.

[Alan Klein]

That's not a secret. It's common knowledge. Just a matter of the historical record, though, obamacare was lifted pretty much verbatim from an idea the Republicans had floated a short time before.

So, one might wish to take a little care with casting aspersions.

As a consumer of obamacare, I can say that I wish it was a better system.

Please don't try to change history.  Not one Republican voted for Obamacare.  Not one Republican was even invited into the conferences to decide what was in the Obamacare law; only Democrats were there.  This law was passed by Democrats only which is one of the reasons the Democrats lost the Senate to Republicans and Democrat congressmen lost big time in the last election.

[amolitor]

I never said the voted for it. I said the plan was lifted from them.

Actually it turns out that basically everyone has floated this plan at one time or another. The insurance companies have been trying to get it done for decades and whatever party was in charge obediently carried water as instructed. The form, as finally passed, very closely resembles the form proposed by the Republicans in the go round one turn before Obama was elected.

I actually looked up the history. Did you?