Check out this little episode from LA Times columnist Steve Lopez on a two-hour, $5000 visit to a local emergency room. Pray you won't need stitches anytime soon.
After a short wait, a nurse took his vitals, an ER tech washed the gash with a saline solution and he got a tetanus shot because he couldn't remember when he'd had his last one.
Then the doctor came in, draped the area and sutured the wound, a two-layer job that required 29 stitches. Budris was on his way roughly two hours after arriving at the hospital.
That was in July.
The bill arrived last month.
Go ahead, take a wild guess before you read the next paragraph. Are you ready?
Two bills, one for ER costs and one for the doctor's fee, totaled nearly $5,000.
Dr. Budris was floored.
As a physician, he's well aware that emergency room treatment is very expensive. But knowing the true cost of the limited supplies and labor required to treat such a minor wound, he found the experience more than a little disturbing.
For one thing, he could barely understand the bill sent him by the hospital, which he asked me not to name. I agreed after checking around and finding that the charges were not out of whack with other ERs. Budris' story isn't about one hospital.
Instead, it's a snapshot of a healthcare system gone mad, in which doctors are discouraged, hospitals go out of business and costs are inflated in a shell game between health insurance companies and medical service providers, while the patients who pay their bills get shafted.
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