I recently spent some time with my 90 year old mother over the Mother's Day weekend. She currently is being cared for by my 70 year old brother, who actually has a home and family in Florida. I try to give him an opportunity to go home for a week or so, about every other month now that I have retired. Mom needs constant care, and Medicare takes care of her medical bills including having a nurse come by once a week, and occupational therapy, Medicaid provides chore help for 4-6 hours every day.She has a supplemental health care plan to assist with prescriptions, and the things that are not paid for or underpaid for by Medicare.
As I was going through some of her papers I ran across the explanations of benefits for Medicare regarding her last trip to the hospital. She had to go in for a couple of days due to some heart palpitations. She has a atrial fibrillation heart problem. I knew medical expenses were high, but I was shocked going through the bill. The hospital stay alone was over $11,000 and then there were the costs for the tests, labs, medicine, and just different individuals that she was in contact with. All in all the two day stay was over $25,000. I can see why a person with no insurance and not under a government program would be overwhelmed and not be able to handle these types of cost.
Since I know there is no way to check the cost of prices charged by the hospital for services, or this prices accurate and reasonable? I would think that since all the hospitals we use these days are "for profit" they probably could be reduced. Many of the service some nowhere close to the amounts which are actually paid or approved by Medicare. I would believe that we could reduce our health care problems by some type of uniform regulations for hospitals. I'm sure that the hospitals are all against that and feel that they have to charge more for their services to provide the best service and cover their insurance costs. Since the cost of going to a doctor and particularly a hospital have been going up as the population ages, the cost of insurance
premiums to cover these people, are also going up.
The drug companies are also part of the problem. When demand is high for products companies raise the price. I'm sure people have heard the tales of companies raising the price of cancer drugs and others. A cancer drug can cost up to $156,000 a year for a patient. A new muscular dystrophy drug that came on the market last year was priced at $300,000 annually for a patient. I guess the money that I have sent every year to help Jerry's kids wasn't enough. By the way after 50 years for collecting for Jerry's kids we still don't have a cure. The drug companies say they need theses prices because of the research money they have sunk into development of the drugs. One reason that health insurance rates are high is because we are subsidizing other's, including my mother, high cost medicines. In 2006 when the Medicare Part D was added, the pharmaceutical lobbyist convinced legislatures not to let Medicare negotiate for drug prices because they said it would amount to price control. Hogwash! What it amounts to is no help for the consumer and a license to steal for the pharmaceutical companies, whose profits are still some of the best among American companies.
To be honest our healthcare system has systematically been destroyed in the name of profits and the shortsightedness of our government to see this.
