News of the day

Dean wrote: Everything needs to be paid for and everything has a price. If hospitals were seriously overcharging then this would manifest itself in the annual fiscal acccounts that they have to publish every year (check yourself: the annual finacial statement of the hostpital in the Time article) - when figures like 400% or more are banded about then the difference between income and costs would be huge - too large to "bury" with clever accounting. The cost of a series of blood tests is more than the material costs of the lab analysis, they ammortise other cost factors into the itemised charges that they're not permitted to itemise on a bill, such as nursing care, heating, orderlies, cleaners & cleaning materials ext.

Understood.

Although I would have expected that the "bolded" items would be what you are paying for when you pay the "daily hospital stay" charge, typically thousands per day which is a line-item on every bill.  If this doesn't cover the heat and toilet cleaner, we're really screwed

Then there's the matter of running far too many unnecessary tests, something I witnessed watching them run up hundreds of thousands $$ while still managing to do very little of benefit, for Dad. 

What is going on in the US? I'm picking up lots of friends from there on facebook talking about bomb sites and explosions having just gone onto the site. Stay safe, my US friends - I hope that this ends swiftly and that the perpetrators are caught and sorted out.  

And everybody including the FBI is classifying it as a terrorist attack except you-know-who. You would think this idiot would've learned his lesson from Benghazi.

sh*t

Finnforest wrote: Dean, did you read the whole article?  If so, what was your overall impression?

I couldn't find the whole article online but found a section of it concerning overcharging. One example was being charged $1.50 for non-prescription pain killer that "You can buy 100 of them on Amazon for $1.49" (except you only get 24 for $1.50 ... plus $4.99 shipping .. so 27¢ a pill not 1½¢ but that's still not $1.50... so, nearly right). One of the points made in the extract was that the hospital charged $15,000 for blood-tests that Medicare would have paid them "a few hundred dollars for" - [I would like to see a little more accuracy in the reporting - actual figures rather than vagaries and guessing, I get the feeling that the reporter was pulling numbers out of his butt, but hey-ho] - and that is ludicrous if it is true but an indication that Medicare has got something right at least - if hospitals can overcharge private patients but not Medicare then that says a lot for not being a private patient.

Edited by Dean - April 15 2013 at 18:17

The terrorist bomb attacks in Boston are on every channel in Aus now. My prayers and hopes with all involved in this tragedy.


Edited by AtomicCrimsonRush - April 15 2013 at 20:58

Slartibartfast wrote: sh*t

Unexpectedly deep. 

Just awful, those poor people who've lost limbs.   I have relatives in Groton, Mass., about an hour from Boston.

Those terrorist bomb attacks on the Boston marathon may have been inspired by an episode of the TV-series "Rizzoli and Isles".  The series is located in Boston, and in one episode a sniper took out participants in the Boston marathon. I immediately thought of that episode when I heard of these bomb attacks.

My condolences and sympathy to the victims. Gosh what a crazy world... it looks like a rather amateurish attack though