[3789] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Must Read: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (PRIVACY Forum mailing list)
Thu Feb 21 17:57:57 2013
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:48:41 -0800
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Must Read: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us
http://j.mp/YeSrmG (Time)
"Dozens of midpriced items were embedded with similarly aggressive
markups, like $283.00 for a "CHEST, PA AND LAT 71020." That's a simple
chest X-ray, for which MD Anderson is routinely paid $20.44 when it
treats a patient on Medicare, the government health care program for
the elderly. Every time a nurse drew blood, a "ROUTINE VENIPUNCTURE"
charge of $36.00 appeared, accompanied by charges of $23 to $78 for
each of a dozen or more lab analyses performed on the blood sample. In
all, the charges for blood and other lab tests done on Recchi amounted
to more than $15,000. Had Recchi been old enough for Medicare, MD
Anderson would have been paid a few hundred dollars for all those
tests. By law, Medicare's payments approximate a hospital's cost of
providing a service, including overhead, equipment and salaries."
- - -
Note also that reports are suggesting that electronic health records
are being used by hospitals to jack up billing even more with a simple
click!
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
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