Health Insurance in America: Legalized Extortion

[JayhawkSD]

3. I have been hospitalized twice in the last five years.

Five years ago I had a lung crisis that had me in intensive care for a week and in the hospital for another week. The cost for those two weeks, including a full week of intensive care was $59,000.

This winter I was in the hospital, same hospital, for pnuemonia for one week. No intensive care, just regular care with IV antibiotics. The cost for that hospital stay was $58,000.

Intensive care costs twice what regular care does, so in non-inflated terms we should be looking at $59,000 and $19,600 for the two visits, but the visit which should have cost $19,600 had gone up to $58,000, a 195% increase. Insurance had nothing to do with that higher cost, other than to pay the higher bill. Understandably, they pass that higher cost on in the form of larger premiums.

Granted, the insurance company did not pay the entire amount in either case, they paid the contracted amount. But that contracted amount had gone up by the same 195% that the gross billing did.

And so we curse the evil insurance companies and call them monsters, while we bless the wonderful hospitals who are seemingly filled with wonderful caring people who don't want any money and would, supposedly, reject a dollar if we handed it to them. The reality is that insurance companies are operating at an average profit margin of below 10% while hospitals routinely make profit margins in the 50% range.