Hospital Charges Are Outrageous

Select MonthSeptember 2012August 2012July 2012June 2012May 2012April 2012March 2012February 2012January 2012December 2011November 2011October 2011September 2011August 2011July 2011June 2011May 2011April 2011March 2011February 2011January 2011December 2010November 2010October 2010September 2010August 2010July 2010June 2010May 2010April 2010March 2010February 2010January 2010December 2009	$83,046 For A 3 Hour Hospital Visit - Why Are Hospital Bills So Outrageous? The fastest way to go broke in America is to go to the hospital.  These days it seems like almost everyone has an outrageous hospital bill story to share.  It is getting to the point where most people are deathly afraid to go to the hospital.  All the financial progress that you have made in recent years can literally be wiped out in just a matter of hours.  For example, you are about to read about an Arizona woman that was recently charged $83,046 for a 3 hour hospital visit.  How in the world is anyone supposed to pay a bill like that?  I have a really hard time understanding why a visit to the doctor should ever be more than a couple hundred bucks or why a hospital stay should ever be more than a couple thousand dollars.  Outrageous hospital bills are a real pet peeve of mine and I have not even been to the hospital in ages.  What makes all of this even more infuriating is that Medicare, Medicaid and the big insurance companies are often charged less than 10 percent of what the rest of us are billed for the same procedures.  There is a reason why 41 percent of all working age Americans are struggling with medical debt right now.  It is because our health care system has become a giant money making scam.  Millions of desperate Americans go into hospitals each year assuming that they will be treated fairly, but in the end they get stuck with incredibly outrageous bills and in many cases cruel debt collection techniques are employed against them if they don't pay. So why do we have to pay so much for medical care?  Back in 1980, less than 10 percent of U.S. GDP went to health care.  Today, about 18 percent of U.S. GDP goes toward health care. And considering the fact that over the next 20 years the number of Americans 65 years of age or older is projected to double that number is going to go even higher. On a per capita basis we spend about twice as much on health care as anyone else in the world. Health Care 6th Largest Economy In fact, if the U.S. health care system was a nation it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet. America spent 2.47 trillion dollars on health care in 2009, and it is now being projected that we will spend 4.5 trillion dollars on health care in 2019. Our system is completely and totally broken, and Obamacare is going to make things far worse.  We need to throw the entire system out and start over. A perfect example of why this is true is what happened when 52-year-old Marcie Edmonds went in to a hospital in Arizona recently to get treated for a scorpion sting.... With the help of a friend, she called Poison Control and was advised to go to the nearest hospital that had scorpion antivenom, Chandler Regional Medical Center. At the hospital, an emergency room doctor told her about the antivenom, called Anascorp, that could quickly relieve her symptoms. Edmonds said the physician never talked with her about the cost of the drug or treatment alternatives. Her symptoms subsided after she received two doses of the drug Anascorp through an IV, and she was discharged from the hospital in about three hours. Weeks later, she received a bill for $83,046 from Chandler Regional Medical Center. The hospital, owned by Dignity Health, charged her $39,652 per dose of Anascorp. What makes this even more shocking is that hospitals in Mexico only charge $100 per dose of Anascorp. Hospitals Charge Whatever They Can Get Away With These days many hospitals will do whatever they can get away with on hospital bills. One NBC News reporter was absolutely stunned at the bill that she received after she went in for neck surgery for degenerative disc disease recently.... Once I got my itemized bill, the grand total was a little over $66,013.40!   That was for a one night stay and a four level vertebrae fusion surgery.  The charges included $22 for one sleeping pill, $427 for one dissecting tool, and $32,000 for four titanium plates and ten screws. I brought it to Todd Hill, a fee based patient advocate who helps people decipher their medical bills. "The screws in your procedure were billed at $605 a piece for a total of $6050 dollars. We've seen those in our past research for $25 or $30," he said. "In this case, the markup is tremendous," he added. Considering the fact that 77 percent of American families are living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time, a single hospital bill like this can be a financial death blow. Charged $11,000 for indigestion If you have time, read this tragic story where one man was charged $11,000 and all he had was a case of bad indigestion.  Nothing was even wrong with him and now his family is going to have to declare bankruptcy. Often medical bills are so complex and so confusing that nobody can really understand them.  A lot of the times this is probably done on purpose to keep people from understanding how badly they are being overcharged.  The following is from a recent article in the New York Times.... Hospital care tends to be the most confounding, and experts say the charges you see on your bill are usually completely unrelated to the cost of providing the services (at hospitals, these list prices are called the “charge master file”). “The charges have no rhyme or reason at all,” Gerard Anderson, director of the Center for Hospital Finance and Management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Why is 30 minutes in the operating room $2,000 and not $1,500? There is absolutely no basis for setting that charge. It is not based upon the cost, and it’s not based upon the market forces, other than the whim of the C.F.O. of the hospital.” And those charges don’t really have any connection to what a hospital or medical provider will accept for payment, either. “If you line up five patients in their beds and they all have gall bladders removed and they get the same exact medication and services, if they have insurance or if they don’t have insurance, the hospital will get five different reimbursements, and none of it is based on cost,” said Holly Wallack, a medical billing advocate in Miami Beach. “The insurers negotiate a different rate, and if you are uninsured, underinsured or out of network, you are asked to pay full fare.” It has been estimated that hospitals in the United States overcharge their patients by about 10 billion dollars every single year. Medical Bills #1 Reason For Bankruptcy Medical bills are the number one reason why Americans file for bankruptcy.  As I mentioned earlier, approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans are struggling with medical debt. And health insurance is not as much protection as you might think.  According to a report published in the American Journal of Medicine, of all bankruptcies caused by medical debt, approximately 75 percent of the time the people actually did have health insurance. And if you can't pay your bills, many hospitals will come after you ruthlessly. In fact, collection agencies sought to collect unpaid medical bills from approximately 30 million Americans during 2010 alone. If you don't cough up the cash they are demanding you can even end up in prison.  The following example comes from CBS News.... How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill -- one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs." Although the U.S. abolished debtors' prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don't pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. Why Are Bills So High? But why do these bills have to be so high?  It is not like many doctors are getting rich these days.  In fact, many of them are going broke. So what is the deal? Well, as a recent article by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts explained, there are a whole lot of people pulling profit out of the system other than just doctors these days.... There are two main reasons that US medicine is so expensive. One is that profits are piled upon profits. In addition to wages and salaries for doctors, nurses, and medical personnel, the American health care system has to provide profits for private hospitals, diagnostic centers, insurance companies, and for the accountants, attorneys and management consultants made necessary by the enormous litigation and regulatory compliance cost. American medicine is the most regulated in the world and the most criminalized. And another big factor is that the rest of us have to make up the difference for the patients that are not profitable. It has gotten to the point where some doctors in certain kinds of practices barely make any profit on Medicare and Medicaid patients.  In fact, in many cases doctors actually lose money treating them. An article posted on medicalcostadvocate.com has some outrageous examples of the difference between what you and I are billed and what Medicare pays out for the exact same procedures.... A patient in Illinois was charged $12,712 for cataract surgery. Medicare pays $675 for the same procedure. In California, a patient was charged $20,120 for a knee operation for which Medicare pays $584. And a New Jersey patient was charged $72,000 for a spinal fusion procedure that Medicare covers for $1,629. So not only do we pay very high taxes to support Medicaid and Medicare, we also have to pay higher medical bills in order to make up the difference for the money that doctors and hospitals are not seeing from those patients. Unfortunately, Medicaid and Medicare are expected to grow dramatically in the years ahead. For example, it is now being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to Medicaid. And enrollment in Medicare is projected to grow from 50.7 million today to 73.2 million in 2025. How in the world can our current system possibly handle this? And please don't tell me that Obamacare is the answer. The truth is that Obamacare is going to take everything that is wrong with our health care system and make it even worse. We are heading into the greatest health care crisis the United States has ever seen, and none of our leaders seem to have any answers. I am just absolutely disgusted with the condition of our health care system.  It is dominated by government bureaucrats, pharmaceutical corporations and the big health insurance companies.  It is a giant money making scam that seeks to drain as much money from the rest of us as possible.

Less Doctoring, Not More

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American Healthcare: What Business Are Ye In? by Bill Sardi Edited by Dr. Don Selvidge A couple of PhD analysts write about what’s wrong with American healthcare in a recent edition of The New England Journal of Medicine. Their report, entitled "What Business Are We In?" They analogously lead off their article by pointing to the Eastman Kodak Company that saw itself in the film business rather than the imaging business and after 131 years in business, filed for bankruptcy in January of 2012. So they write: "The analogous situation in health care is that whereas doctors and hospitals focus on producing health care, what people really want is health. Health care is just a means to that end – and an increasingly expensive one. If we could get better health some other way, just as we can now produce images without film….., then maybe we wouldn't have to rely so much on health care." The American People Fallen Sucker to Sales Pitch But do we really see the end of doctoring? The American people have fallen sucker for the sales pitch, that America has the best healthcare in the world, and they want more of it, regardless of whether it works or not. Many Americans feel they paid into a system (Medicare) and they want what they paid for. They want the miracle drugs, the CAT-scans, the robotic surgery, all of it, as long as it doesn’t have to be paid out of their own pocket. They can’t imagine that that healthcare system cannot possibly deliver on its promises to provide more and more high-technology medicine to a growing population of aging Americans. There will be a default, call it rationing, but from a different quarter, as I will explain momentarily. Modern medicine is the problem, not the solution.  Modern medicine is not going to take money out of its own hands. The solutions are going to come from an entirely different quarter. Neither did Kodak see the handwriting on the wall. The only way to reform medicine and bring down its obscene costs is to create alternatives, just like Kodak succumbed to digital cameras. Income predicts health. People with extra dollars can purchase better quality food, vitamins, and tend to be more literate and therefore savvy about producing health at home. The irony here is that the people who can least afford modern medicine tend to be its best customers, while wealthier and better educated tend to seek alternative treatments (think of Steve Jobs in his battle with pancreatic cancer). Retirees take more and more problematic and ineffective medicines without recognizing these pharmacological elixirs are causing more problems than their diseases. But contrast this with the recent revelation that 46% of American retirees solely rely on a Social Security check. Over-priced American healthcare stole their pay raises and left them penniless in their retirement!  There is no freedom to choose. Most retirees have to take what Medicare pays for, and it certainly doesn’t pay for vitamin supplements or healthy food.   Greater advances in health status will come from improving the American food chain than in any doctoring. There may be no way out of this mess short of altering the food chain, eliminating cheap sugars (high fructose corn syrup), taste enhancers (MSG), hormonized meat, hydrogenated fats, iron-fortified breakfast cereals, and cheap food that is centered on carbohydrates (pasta, rice, bread, beans). But don’t bet on Kraft or Archer Daniels Midland leading the way either. All the promotion of healthy foods is completely undone by TV advertising for snack foods. Pringles are not going to disappear. Liberated American women are not given to the inconvenience of breast feeding. While an estimated 74% start out with good intentions, only 33% of moms exclusively breast feed at three months of age and only 14% exclusively breast feed at six months. The selection of an alternative to breast milk may doom a child’s future health. A recent study reveals that cow’s milk infant formulas provide an excessive amount of leucine, an amino acid that genetically re-programs a child towards obesity. Cow’s milk is intended to build a newborn calf into a 1000-pound cow. How will modern medicine respond to this sad discovery? Will pediatricians warn mothers away from cow’s milk formulas? Don’t bet on it. Modern medicine will revel in the fact there is more disease to treat and collect more insurance money. Less doctoring, not more. If you want to remain healthy you need to learn how to skirt around the present healthcare system. To conclude, modern medicine is not going to recommend anything where it is shoved out of the picture. But that is exactly what needs to be done. Humans can be re-programmed to be healthy by their foods and dietary supplements, not doctor-prescribed drugs. Will this happen? The Western disease-promoting diet can be changed. September 3, 2012 Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body. Copyright © 2012 Bill Sardi Word of Knowledge Agency, San Dimas, California. This article has been written exclusively for www.LewRockwell.com and other parties who wish to refer to it should link rather than post at other URLs.  The Best of Bill Sardi

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Sarah Bush Hospital Monopoly Costs Consumers

Sarah Bush Hospital Medical Monopoly Cost Consumers

A while back I started on a quest to figure out why health care costs in the United States take 17.5%  of the Gross National Product (up from 5%  in 1958) and continues to rise faster than inflation. This explosion of costs affects every household with increasing insurance rates, greater deductibles and co-pays, and higher taxes. This is a national time-bomb!

Lack Free Market Increases Costs

The major cause of these rising costs is lack of freedom in the health care market. Medical monopolies dominate the health care market place killing free trade. Let me explain.

The free market is where the economy runs on the principles of supply and demand with as little government interference as possible. If a business can produce a product or service at high quality, low price, and with good consumer satisfaction, it will prosper.

Certain businesses from the beginning of time have tried to capture markets and eliminate competition through monopolies often aided by privacy laws and tax free loopholes. According to Adam Smith in the famous “Wealth of Nations”, monopolies lead to lower consumer choice, poor quality, and higher prices.

Local Health Care Market Monopoly Alarming

When I examine the local health care market to see how well free enterprise principles are working, my findings were alarming.  The health care market in the Coles County area is dominated by a well meaning monopoly primarily in the form of Sarah Bush Lincoln Memorial Hospital and to a lesser degree Carle Health Care.

 I love Sarah Bush and the fine people that work there.  But during

28 years in this area, I have seen the hospital take over and dominate almost every aspect of health care making it ever more difficult for tax paying businesses to compete. As one business man I spoke with stated, “They have taken over everything except ambulances and graveyards.  I expect them to do that next.” 

Privacy Props Up Monopolies

Sarah Bush is a private not-for-profit hospital exempt from property, income, and sales tax. Because of its private status, it is not easy to find out about the inner workings and finances of the hospital because most of this is carefully held secrets.  To get this information, one has to find insiders willing to talk about it. There are no elected officials and no outside representation.

They do not have to tell the public anything except the Form 990 required by the US which is needlessly delayed in disclosure a full year after the financial year ends.  They are given 6 months and then they request two 3 month extensions I suspect to make the information as irrelevant as possible.

An enterprise that receives tax dollars should never be allowed to operate without open meetings and disclosure.  This is taxation without representation in the worst form.  I am amazed that this is allowed.

Sarah Bush Owns Most Private Practices

One significant trend I have observed is that twenty five years ago most physicians in the service area owned or rented their own office. Today this is a rarity. About 150 physicians are employed by Sarah Bush and only a few doctors have private practices.

 Our Taxes Subsidize Local Physicians

Since Sarah Bush physicians now work in property tax free buildings, this takes an estimated 23 million of property off the tax rolls and deprives the county of about $500,000 in tax revenue.  This costs each household about $25 a year to subsidize these property taxes.  Also, these businesses no longer pay corporate income taxes plus enjoy other tax-free perks for which private business is not eligible.

Amazing...the highest paid employees in the county and the ones least in need of a tax relief, receives such generous benefits..... does not seem right to me.

Other Monopolistic Actions:

In addition to the competitive advantage from being tax free, several other monopolistic actions by Sarah Bush include:

            Legal price fixing

            Controlling insurance payment to competitors

            Demand for inside referral from employee doctors

            Control of the media market

            Other not so obvious free market abuses

           

           

The end result is not to public advantage. Where a powerful monopoly dominates the market place, there is less choice, poorer quality, less innovation, and higher prices. 

Elimination of Chiropractic Costs Illinois Millions More

Elimination of Chiropractic Costs Illinois Millions More

This past July the budget cuts for the State of Illinois went into effect cutting a grant total of one half of one percent of the budget.  Among these cuts was the elimination of adult coverage for certain Medicaid services among which was chiropractic care.

This morning an adult Medicaid patient came to my office that I had been treating on and off over the years for a chronic low back condition aggrevated by lifting.  He reported that since Medicaid did not pay the $8.67 fee (actually costs State $4.34 since half is paid by federal goverenent)  for chiropractic treatment, he went to his MD where it would pay.

The MD did an exam, took a series of x-rays, did an MRI, gave him some drugs, and sent him to physical therapy.  After treatments and diagnostics costing the Medicaid system well in excess of $1,000, the man reported in his case it did him little good. He decided to come back to us and pay out of his pocket for a treatment he knows works for his low back condition.

Let me see now.  How much did the State of Illinois save for treatment of this man's low back condition by eliminating chiropractic services? If my math is correct, the State paid over a 100 times more for this man's care. Is this an isolated case? No, it happens scores of times every day in offices throughout the State.

I am not bemoaning the fact that our practice no longer receives the $8.63 office visit from Medicaid patients.  Believe me, this small amount makes little difference in our bottom line. I do bemoan the fact that the legislature is apparently more concerned about making cuts to look good rather than actually cutting the programs that save money.

In 2011, 19,861 Medicaid patients used the chiropractic option.  Since passage of the new law July 1, the State will pay an additional $4,500,000 just for the first day of treatment for a Medicaid patient medically.  Millions more will be paid for ongoing visits.

Is this crazy or what?  I suppose millions mean nothing to lawmakers. No wonder we are in such debt.

Dr. Don Selvidge

   

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BlogTalkRadio.com  "Natural Health by Drs. Don & Nancy"

I am always on the look out for ways to spread the word about the Creator's Design for Health. I have recently started a talk radio show on www. BlogTalkRadio.com entitled "Natural Health by Drs. Don and Nancy".

This media will give the opportunity to have an international audience...anywhere the internet is present and English is spoken. We will emphasize God's intent for human health and explore the unfathomable wonders of God's Design.

The shows are only available on archives presently so will not allow call in guests. As time goes on, we will decide on a regular show time, announce this, have you call in and comment.

The first few segments can be found by googling "Natural Health by Drs. Don and Nancy" or by putting this title in the search at www.blogtalkradio.com.

We have some great guests lined up. Keep your eye out and spread the word.

Dr. Don Selvidge 

Sarah Bush No Public Input on Board Selection

I got a letter from a concerned citizen of Coles County about the lack of public input on the selection of new Sarah Bush Health Foundation Board of Directors.

They likely are perfectly within their rights to do it this way, but it shows a lack of respect for the general public that pays the bill through huge fees, taxes, and tax deductable donations. Any institution getting public funds should be required to be open to the public about their activities. 

When asked to be more open to the public SBLHC will quickly tell us they are a private non-profit business and are not required to disclose "didily squat" except the financial report required by the US government which is a year and a half old before we see it. We only get the official "spin" from the organization.

Non-profit private hospitals have a perfect autocratic system protected by law where they got the power to operate like a benevolent foreign dictator in absolute secrecy, charge what the controled market will bear for their services, and control the media. The public is so intimidated by this system, they are afraid to speak out publicly for fear of losing their doctor or other retaliation.

We see the fruits of this system.....health care that takes almost 20% of the GNP, few choices in healthcare, poor quality, a system that kills 100s of thousands.

Joel Fuhrman, MD, PBS Lecture

Science Confirms Creator's Design

I heard Dr. Fuhrman give a talk last night on a Public Broadcasting System (PBS) fund raiser last night.
He spoke of how modern  science has found the greatest power for healing is found in food properly grown and consumed.

In 1930s when it was discovered that the vitamin and minerals in food were important to health, and companies started to produce and promote these artifically on a grand scale.  To this very day in 2012, most health care providers and the general public thinks these are the main nutrients in food beside the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. 

He points out there are 1,000s of micro nutrients only found in food (not vitamins pills) which are essential to optimum health and prevention of disease. He speaks of how nature has placed these there for our healing.

I am not certain of Dr. Fuhrman's religious beliefs, but I get from his talk he believes in intelligent design by God. We must