A day spent as an inpatient at an American hospital costs on average more than $4,000, five times the charge in many other developed countries, according to the International Federation of Health Plans, a global network of health insurance industries. The most expensive hospitals charge more than $12,500 a day. And at many of them, including California Pacific Medical Center, emergency rooms are profit centers. That is why one of the simplest and oldest medical procedures closing a wound with a needle and thread typically leads to bills of at least $1,500 and often much more.At Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, Daniel Diaz, 29, a public relations executive, was billed $3,355.96 for five stitches on his finger after cutting himself while peeling an avocado. At a hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., Arch Roberts Jr., 56, a former government employee, was charged more than $2,000 for three stitches after being bitten by a dog. At Mercy Hospital in Port Huron, Mich., Chelsea Manning, 22, a student, received bills for close to $3,000 for six stitches after she tripped running up a path. Insurers and patients negotiated lower prices, but those charges were a starting point.
The main reason for high hospital costs in the United States, economists say, is fiscal, not medical: Hospitals are the most powerful players in a health care system that has little or no price regulation in the private market.
Rising costs of drugs, medical equipment and other services, and fees from layers of middlemen, play a significant role in escalating hospital bills, of course. But just as important is that mergers and consolidation have resulted in a couple of hospital chains like Partners in Boston, or Banner in Phoenix dominating many parts of the country, allowing them to command high prices from insurers and employers.
In most other industries, antitrust legislation would be invoked, the mega-hospitals broken up, and their executives charged with price-fixing. And in any other developed nation, these procedures would cost the patient nothing at the point of delivery, and the government would regulate pricing and billing. But of course we must never be allowed do any of these things because it would be too "disruptive". So the rent extraction and medical bankruptcies will continue, and thanks to the Goldberg Act, a greater share of the total cost burden will now be shouldered by taxpayers. This is worse than a policy failing--- by legitimizing profiteering on sickness and human misery, it's a moral failing as well.
---Baron V
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