There are health care nightmares and then there is what happened to Eric Fergusan, 54, in North Carolina. Fergusan was bitten by a snake on the foot while putting out trash last August. He drove himself to the hospital and was given anti-venom medicine that can be purchased online for as low as $750. The bill” $89,227 bill for an 18-hour stay.
He is fortunately insured but it is the latest example of the how medical bills have become little more than openly fraudulent billing by hospitals. Drug and treatment costs have soared in this country because members of Congress and the Obama Administration yielded continually to this powerful lobby that hires former members and staff members and contributes mightily to campaign funds. The result is that citizens are being sheared like sheep as politicians fall over each other to help these lobbyists.
The Lake Norman Regional Medical Center is responsible for this outrageous bill. Blue Cross and Blue Shield reduced the total bill to $20,227 and the couple paid $5,400 out-of-pocket to cover their deductible and co-pay. So how does that work? The hospital charges roughly $90,000 and then suddenly drops to $20,000? In most other fields, that would be called fraudulent billing but, in the United States, it is considered standard billing procedures.
What is really amazing is the frank response of the hospital: “Our costs for providing uncompensated care are partially covered by higher bills for other patients.” In other words, we do not actually charge what your care cost but instead gouge anyone who can pay more to cover losses on other patients. Consider other industries following this practice. “Yes, your car was $40,000 but you have been charged $90,000 because we had some car loans fail with other customers” or “Yes, I agree to represent you for $100,000 but I have a hit-and-run defendant disappear without payment in his case so I am charging you $150,000.” What is equally alarming is the matter-of-fact attitude of the hospitals who first try to overcharge and then shrug and take, in this case, almost one-fifth of the original demand.
These abuses are reported everyday but you hardly see a member of Congress rushing to the floor to demand reforms. Why? Just look at who the former members are working for?
Source: Yahoo
The same week I received the second monthly statement in a row from my hospital with a $100 credit, I receive two collection callls from their agents demanding $199 and $10. They have no idea what’s going on internally or externally. BTW, it’s one of the largest networks in the country. Its head is nicknamed Toby, if that’ll help.
Lets study ten other countries that have differing versions of so called socialized medicine and then adopt the best model. We always hear these little itchBaying stories about not being able to get skin grafts and what not for beauty queens. People in Canada are laughing at us.
Hard to believe so many Americans think our healthcare system is just fine and dandy.
When purchasing the “product” is not optional, it should not be a for profit venture. Pretty simple really.
I’ve got to start paying more attention to Justin Beiber – the state of the USA is making me physically ill – and lord knows how much is costs to see a doctor.
To say that food stamps do not artificially increase demand and by extension, food prices, is like saying rivers do not rise when it rains. Whenever the government throws money at anything, by rule, corruption and inflation always follow. Think $90,000 to treat your snake bite!!! Before the government began throwing money at healthcare (Medicare), people did not need insurance just to visit the doctor, according to my grandfather. As for drought, it creates opportunities elsewhere, helping to stabilize prices over the long haul. The food industry today is global.
Healthcare reform has hardly begun.
Samantha, food prices do not go up because of food stamps, the recent rise has been due to other factors such as lack of water (drought) and rising fuel costs. These have been well documented and reported.
Bruce E Wyoch is our hospital Rain Man.
The other layers of this are also disturbing, one being $5400 as co-pay? I don’t see why a simple snake bite / emergency room visit and (less than) day visit would cost a total of that, not even the co-pay. I would like to see the itemized bill. From what I can glean if 81K was for the antivenin of a 89K bill, the non antivenin costs were originally 8K – which is OUTRAGEOUS.
And it begs the question of whether ANY antivenin was really needed – often copperhead bites medically need NONE. That’s right, NONE. People may want it or expect it, like antibiotics for a viral infection, but often they don’t really NEED it. It is a bit of an art, treating snakebite, but here in NC we have the most bites per person for copperheads in the nation, you’d think all hospital care would be up to snuff – even so it would be interesting to find out how well this hospital ranks regarding snakebite care – and an investigation of other bills…
Smells fishy to me, even if they do taste like chicken.
Insurance companies and hospitals running amok together, even after the mild insurance coverage reform (mixed with other things) the ACA is, seems depressingly like the Republican health care plan, as revealed by Alan Grayson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-usmvYOPfco
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/01/27/4643457/mooresville-patient-stunned-by.html#.UulO89VX_Ww
Good news. They are being investigated.
“Lake Norman Regional, a private for-profit hospital, is under scrutiny by others for questionable practices. In a 2010 lawsuit, recently unsealed in Mecklenburg County, two emergency room doctors alleged that Lake Norman and Davis Regional Medical Center in Statesville committed fraud by offering kickbacks to doctors who would order unnecessary tests and admit more patients to increase corporate revenues. The federal Department of Justice is also investigating.”
The price of any product or service we buy includes elements of overhead as well as direct costs and profit. The cost of treating patients who cannot pay is part of the hospital’s overhead and it’s reasonable for hospitals to consider those costs when setting REASONABLE fees.
However, the fee for the same services should be the same for all patients. Charging more for a patient who has “good” insurance for the same services and padding the bill with charges for services that were never provided should be a crime. Any good prosecutor would probably be able to find something to charge this hospital with. I suspect if someone went through that bill item by item, the bogus charges would leap out.
Top documentary films: (listings under hospitals = 662 title results)
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/search/?results=hospitals
TOP DOCUMENTARY FILMS: WATCH FREE (106 titles: some very good)
SELECTION RECOMMENDED:
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(SICKO:among others)
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http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/category/health/page/8/ (FOOD RELATED)
FRONTLINE (2009)
Sick Around America
http://video.pbs.org/video/1099857730/
Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much Hardcover – Bargain Price, May 9, 2006
by Maggie Mahar
[Excerpted from the book review]:
Mahar ….”her keen analytic talents and economic savvy to America’s complicated and increasingly dysfunctional health-care system. Mahar’s diagnosis: our privately managed yet mainly publicly funded system produces the worst of both worlds—high costs, rampant inefficiencies and intense competition among providers that doesn’t benefit patients. She traces how today’s market-driven medical system emerged over the past century thanks to trends that gradually stripped power from doctors and gave it to corporations, turning patients into profit centers.”
“Before patients can reclaim their rightful place as the center—and indeed as the raison d’être—of our health care system,” Mahar suggests, “we must once again empower doctors . . . to practice patient-centered medicine—based not on corporate imperatives, doctors’ druthers, or even patients’ demands,” but on the best scientific research available.”
No matter how much money a hospital loses or how close to bankruptcy, the CEO and administrators still must get the huge multi-million dollar salaries because their contracts say so. That is the primary difference between the more desirable Medicare for all and today’s system. With Medicare for all, CEO salaries would be similar to other govt dept managers.
Bruce E. Woych give it a rest.
When the mafia does this it is termed “busting out” a corporation. When business does it it is entitled Private Equity.
In any case, this patterned process of “leveraged HEALTH” is a contagious epidemic for Public Health systems and is becoming the preferred model to crash and “privatize” (loot) the public domain. iN THE CURRENT “REFORM” MODE, THE INSURANCE INDUSTRIES BECOME THE INTERMEDIARIES THAT WILL ACCESS AN uncontrolled public pool of money financed through taxation. In effect this may well trump the derivatives market of government backed sub-prime loans that precipitated the speculation boom and ultimately crashed the economy. The claim that prices will fall is very shady. There is no incentive when money pools are created in mass quantitative easing rates; there is just an insidious feeding frenzy followed by greater default.
MORE PRIVATIZATION ! Corruption can be defined as breaking the public trust. In this regard the systemic is corrupt!
The Hospitals under private equity will be utilizing crisis driven debt to set an agenda for restructuring expenses, costs and salaries around preferable standards of living that are decided by themselves. Private satellite outsourcing will control horizontal services maintaining price indexes across the spectrum under private profit dependent (remember profits must grow each year not stay the same): The hospital administrative salaries will go through the roof as they scream about complexity and risk…while they “streamline” the working system and place actual health delivery into contingency positions that reduce direct care salaries as “cost reduction” concerns on their chopping block of market expedience and efficiency.
Profit Driven Medicine orchestrated by running heavy debt, crisis and
blaming the public sector and scapegoating the government tax systems for not compensating them enough…of course how can you pay them enough when salaries of these same administrators are surgical sponges to that system? It is a spiraling event provoked capture of Health reservoir resources; and just another way the 1% can tap into the main jugular of real society.
The hospitals have baseline costs and certainly this is reasonable to bill for but what I have noticed is billing costs to the patient often involve how desperate the patient is. Life threatening? the cost is higher. Saving a premature baby, Highest of all because parents would do anything to save their child. It is proven when the hosptial / insurer agreed billing cost is 20k and the hospital fluffs it up to 90k. 70k of pure money gouging. I can see a business having to accomodate those costs that are unreaimbursed such as from accounts that will not pay but you have to wonder why these arears accounts happen when the prices are so extreme to begin with.
We need to have price caps on health services, like other countries that have succesful health care programs. We can learn from them can’t we?