American Health Care as a Source of Humor

[eridani]

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/american-health-care-as-a-source-of-humor/?src=rechp&pagewanted=print

Uwe E. Reinhardt is an economics professor at Princeton. He has some financial interests in the health care field.

From time to time I stand accused of injecting humor into my public presentations on health policy in the United States. As a German-born economist, I find it hurtful.

Germans pride themselves on their lack of humor. Economists, for their part, pride themselves on being practitioners of the dismal science. We are the professional buzzkills who put caveats on any good news.

Now imagine both traits packaged into one human being: you have yours truly. It is not that I inject humor into our otherwise august debate on health policy. Rather, the health system in the United States is in many ways so risible that it comes across as droll even when a dour German-born economist describes it.

One of those risible moments occurred this week when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the Department of Health and Human Services delivered agiant spreadsheet on hospital charges and payments.

The spreadsheet has data in 65,536 rows and 12 columns. It covers, for each of more than 3,000 hospitals, charges and payments for the 100 most frequently billed inpatient cases, along with the average covered charges hypothetically billed by those hospitals for those cases.

<snip>

Why was this news? That charges vary enormously among hospitals surely must have been known for many years. As early as 2004, for example, Lucette Lagnado of The Wall Street Journal reported that on the paper’s front page.

I recall producing from her data, for a 2006 paper, “The Pricing of U.S. Hospital Services: Chaos Behind a Veil of Secrecy,” the following slide. (see link) More such wondrous charges can be found in Ms. Lagnado’s article.

Perhaps the news in this case was that at long last the government had bestirred itself to publish data on which it had been sitting for decades. Indeed, why it had not done so eons ago is an intriguing question.

[Egalitarian Thug]

1. I would laugh except for the fact that

mass-murder isn't really very funny.
& R

[babylonsister]

2. I think this admin is trying to change the data, not bestirr it.

Call me crazy.

[eridani]

3. The data isn't going to change until insurance company thugs are out of the process entirely--

--except for boutique supplemental plans.

[Skittles]

4. you're crazy

nothing will change as long as thieving bastard "insurance" companies have their fingers in the healthcare pie

[abelenkpe]

5. +1000

[kenny blankenship]

6. Those fingers are now fully inside & flexing the iron-mailed fist of Government

Rectal exams are going to be even more uncomfortable from now on. But that will be the least of our worries.

[harmonicon]

7. Probably not crazy, but just painfully naïve. (nt)