Unlike going to get a haircut or a
massage, you never really know how much you are going to be charged for services
that are provided to you at a hospital. Sick or injured, visits to the ER are
costly, even more so to the uninsured, and rates vary significantly between hospitals.
For example, the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid revealed that the
same treatment at one hospital in New York cost $100,000, and at a hospital 30
miles away in the same metropolitan city cost $7,000 (Young & Kirkham, 2013). But who has time to comparison
shop when your dying?
Hospitals
have what is called the chargemaster, or list of billable services and items to
a patient or their health insurance provider. Unfortunately, the chargemaster
rates have become hugely inflated, and hospitals can charge patients whatever
they want. Hospital lobbyists spend more than the defense and oil industries
combined to keep things this way (Brill, 2013). As these inflation rates continue to rise,
the price of a single stitch can top $500 (Rosenthal, 2018). In addition, patients
receiving treatment from an out-of-network hospital most times will receive adjusted
cost-to-charge ratios. Hospitals see these patients as cash cows and charge them
significantly more than in-network patients (Bai & Anderson, 2016). These high rates are
potentially keeping patients from seeking necessary or life-threatening care, especially the uninsured. In my opinion, policies should be implemented to offer
transparency in charges and to protect patients from these high charges. What actions
do you think should be taken?
Bai, G., & Anderson, G. F. (2016). US
Hospitals Are Still Using Chargemaster Markups To Maximize Revenues. Health
Affairs, 35(9), 1658–1664. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2016.0093
Brill, S.
(2013, March 4). Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us. Time.
Retrieved from
http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,2136864-1,00.html
Rosenthal,
E. (2018, October 19). As Hospital Prices Soar, a Stitch Tops $500. The New York
Times. Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/health/as-hospital-costs-soar-single-stitch-tops-500.html
Young, J.,
& Kirkham, C. (2013, May 8). Hospital Prices No Longer Secret As New Data
Reveals Bewildering System, Staggering Cost Differences. Huffington Post.
Retrieved from
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/hospital-prices-cost-differences_n_3232678.html
I totally agree: transparency is the way to go. Hospitals often bemoan laws that protect the indigent by requiring the hospital to provide emergency services to people who are unable to pay for them. The response one often hears is that, on account of the non-paying patients, hospitals must overcharge the people who can afford it in order to break even. But this smacks of subtle dishonesty. Many hospitals are businesses whose primary obligation is to their shareholders, and many hospitals are part of a network of such facilities run by multinational corporations (take Universal Health Systems, for instance). These large networks allow corporations to suffer small losses at some locations which are made up for by larger gains at others. Certainly some facilities are struggling to keep their doors open, but I think that if they were legally required to publish their balance sheets and billing rates, they would be singing a very different song.
ReplyDelete