What does health care broken beyond recognition look like? Well, if it’s minor medical surgery in my community, it looks like a cross between theft by deception and plain old fleecing of the unaware.
Since I’m not a fan of Obamacare, and can well afford to pay for my health care the old fashioned way, with a checkbook, I always ask the price. It’s no different than when I’m buying any other service on offer to the public.
Securing such a price for a minor, 60-minute outpatient procedure entails contacting the doctor, the anesthesiologist and the actual facility where all the magic happens. My doctor provided me with his very reasonable price and two facility options so I could solicit quotes for the room he would use. The options were 1) our local hospital, or 2) a private surgery center.
The private surgery center quoted $3,400 for “cash pay,” or $56 per minute for the room. The hospital, apparently wanting to make me feel good about all the charity they routinely shower upon the “cash pay” pilgrim, first quoted $39,460.45 with 60% off for cash, then another 10% off that sum if paid within 10 days. The total became $14,205.
Now, huge discounts like these usually mean you are getting a deal. But here, at the hospital, we begin with $660 per minute and we end up with $236 per minute for BYOM (bring your own money). Forgetting for a moment that the final Super Sale price is more than four times higher at the hospital than the private surgery center, my question is; Who are the poor chumps actually paying the $39,000 an hour price?
Of course, the answer is that all of us are. All of us are paying in every insurance premium that adds to every employers’ bottom line and finds its way into our stream of consumer goods. We are either paying that number or some inflated fraction of it as people with insurance often never bother to ask the price, the consumer having long ago been separated from the capitalistic ideals of supply and demand, of price points, and of caring about price because somehow it just doesn’t feel like his or her own money being spent.
This is why the U.S. spends 16 percent of GDP on medicine when the combined average for other advanced, affluent countries, such as ours, is just over 8%. Think of what our country would look like if we spent that other 8% on infrastructure, education or law enforcement.
— Bob Lacher
Palmer
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