Last week, I commented on "A Severe Case of Diminishing Returns" by referencing a Time magazine article on health care costs from 2013. Written by Steven Brill, author of America's Bitter Pill, "Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us" was a scathing special report highlighting what we seem to always skip over in the health care debate.
“When we debate health care policy, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why exactly are the bills so high?”
Brill sets out to tackle this issue in 24,000 words of investigative journalism that finds some surprising results. I have often recommended the article to friends and colleagues looking for a perspective on the ongoing debate about healthcare in the United States. Unfortunately the article itself (which I have in print) is behind a subscription on Time magazine's website. But I found a wonderful summary of the points on a blog that distills the door-stopping special report into a scant 1,500 words. Read here.
I'd like to hear some brainstorming of solutions to reign in medical costs and force hospitals to be more efficient and fair in their pricing. Or, if you think that there is no problem with the costs, tell me why.
To the latter, I suggest that medical care is not a place for free market absolutism, in the same way that neither electricity nor water are. We must seriously consider government intervention in this market in order to ensure that the natural monopoly is contained.
I think a solution to controlling medical cost is to have hospitals inform us of the actual cost of the medical procedures. I think that we, as a country, deserve to know the price of certain procedures and operations done. I think the unfair pricing from hospitals is due to the lack of our knowledge of the actual prices of medical procedures.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you Brandon, but we also need to be better as a population on educating ourselves on our specific health care plans. For instance this means that people should probably know the difference between being under observation or if you have been admitted, which can drastically change both your personal costs as well as the costs to your insurance company. But problems like these do are not just about people knowing what to ask for when they go into a hospital, there needs to be accountability from the people working in the hospital to ensure that the person is getting the proper care under their health care plan. Oh and maybe if they stop charging a small fortune for things like isotonic solutions such as saline.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kyle on drug pricing. Like I mentioned in class on Tuesday, I think that the cost of pharmaceuticals is ridiculous! Hospitals really need to make their drugs and treatments more affordable. The profit margins on these drugs are huge, and the same medicines are a lot cheaper in other countries. Hospitals take advantage of the fact that people don't know what they really need and what they don't. And the drug should be fairly priced especially for essential drugs which the patient needs.
ReplyDeleteYour point that you made on Tuesday about your friend having to pay an insane cost when she could get it for a $1 back home really sheds light on this problem. Hospitals definitely needs to be more transparent about costs.
DeleteI agree with both Shanice and Daichi.
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