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When Robert Dollar entered Baptist Hospital, he knew precautions had to be taken, because he would be slightly radioactive from taking a tablet intended to rid himself of any remaining cancer cells after having his thyroid removed.
That's why a hospital worker wrapped the light switches, telephone receiver, door handles and a portion of the floor with plastic sheeting. Charge for the wrapping: $2,518. Total bill for his 45-hour stay: $23,396.30.
Hospital pricing in South Florida confuses and dismays (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2009/09/06/0906hospital.html?imw=Y - broken link)
From the same article:
"In Hollywood, Robert Feibusch went to Memorial Regional to have a battery replaced in his defibrillator. He stayed eight hours. Total bill: $46,584.30."
"As with most patients, Dollar first received a bill showing only a total of gross charges and what his insurer paid. He had to demand an itemized bill to learn the details.
In this case, Dollar's insurer, Neighborhood Health Partnership, paid $9,400, a negotiated rate for the services. Dollar's co-pay was $500. After he complained that he was now unemployed, Baptist arranged for him to pay off the co-pay at $25 a month."
So he got radioactive treatment for a 500 dollar co-pay. He is complaining about the cost of the services BEFORE his insurance negotiated the price? Seriously? This is news?
Also in the article, he complains that:
"Costs must be brought down to help cover the uninsured."
Has it never occured to these people that the reason why the gross bill, before negotiations by insurance companies are so high is because the hospitals ALREADY provide services to people regardless of their ability to pay?
The bleeding heart mentality got into the politics of the insurance/hospital games, and thus we are seeing negative reprocussions from an already government mandated law that hospitals can not dump patients.
This guy is complaining for the sake of complaining for the agenda of a public option paid for by somebody else... and using semantics to try to justify it.
The problem with the article is that it does not tell us .....
1) what the insurance actually paid
2) how much of that some was actual costs and how much was to cover costs incurred for providing care to uninsured paitents
3) how much the admin to figure all this out cost.
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