Comment

Why medical bills are killing us

2
EiMitch2/23/2013 2:20:30 pm PST

Still in the middle of reading this. I’ve already got two comments so far:

1 - You are quoting wa-a-a-ay too much of the article here, EC.

2 - It wasn’t that long ago there was a debate in another lgf page over whether its reasonable to get price estimates over the phone. Here is why the “no” side is completely wrong:

Stamford Hospital spokesman Scott Orstad told me that the $199.50 figure for the troponin test was taken from what he called the hospital’s chargemaster. The chargemaster, I learned, is every hospital’s internal price list. Decades ago it was a document the size of a phone book; now it’s a massive computer file, thousands of items long, maintained by every hospital.

In other words, the hospital has set those prices in advance. Even the “non-profit” hospitals do this. Our health is in the hands of f***ing thieves!