3 ms·
This is great. Article in The Atlantic back in 2009: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/307617/ htt
by CoffeeDregs 8y ago
This is great.
Article in The Atlantic back in 2009: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/307617/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-ame...
My mother-in-law died of brain cancer over the course of about five days. We received a "Statement of Benefits". She received ~$130,000 of care. Medicare paid ~$30,000. That's bullshit. Per James Fallows' article, medical price transparency is CRITICAL. You can't improve something if you can't see it and can't measure it until after you experience it.
I'm an anti-Trump (and anti-Republican) Republican but I have to admit that, with this Medicare transparency action, sometimes this administration takes surprisingly sensible actions.
- iooi 8y agoWere you responsible for that debt? Why did Medicare cover so little?
- CoffeeDregs 8y agoGreat question. We were not responsible for the difference. The "Statement of Benefits" is a very confusing US healthcare tradition in which you're told how much you should have paid before being told what you owe. In our case, there was a corresponding "Medicare discount" (or something; it's been 8 years) and the final bill was $0. The situation is terribly regressive: people with the least money and the least likely to be able to afford healthcare and are therefore most likely to suffer high hospital costs. People with the most money get healthcare "insurance" and so get the lowest prices.