Actual cost of health care

[SHRED]

There is no way that the service performed equals the price paid.
Stay in the hospital one night and BAM!...look at the bill. Dear god I could get my cars rebuilt and more for that.

The debate needs to center on just how much the insurance industry is adding to health care costs. Since the Repukes are insurance/pharmaceutical company controlled then don't hold your breath.

[China_cat]

1. My 13 year old grandson

had to have -3- stitches taken in his hand. The bill was $900+.

At first I couldn't believe my son when he told me but he showed me the bill. They didn't have any insurance at the time, either.

[Kolesar]

2. I had a surgery bill for ~$4000

The insurance company got them down to $1200 for the "negotiated price". If you don't have an insurance company getting contract prices for you, you get ripped off.

[SHRED]

4. So they work hand in glove

The medical profession forces you to get insurance or else.

[Kolesar]

6. A good arguement for a single-payer system

Like Medicare or Canadian medicine.

[ewagner]

3. ONe week in hospital

Hospital bill only (no Doctors fees, emergency room fees or labs)

$48,000.00

[SHRED]

5. That is an expensive...

hotel stay!

[Kolesar]

7. That's like fifty times higher than a nursing home

from my recollection. I just don't get it.

[xmas74]

9. 1 1/2 weeks in hospital

was about 42,000 for me. No ER, just check-in.
Birth of child.
So-birthing room, anesthesia(epidural), monitors, midwife, nurses, etc (no meal plan for nearly 4 days-though I was charged).
Cesaraen-OR, etc, etc.
Bills for both myself and my child.
The lab bills were separate and came later in the mail (about 3,000)

My child is 5 and I am still slowly paying off what my insurance refused to cover.

[HuckleB]

8. Hospital costs vary widely

Hospital costs vary widely

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/10773280.htm

"The most expensive rooms in Monterey County aren't at Pebble Beach or other exclusive resorts. They're at area hospitals, led by Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, where a night's stay in the intensive care unit carries a pricetag of more than $6,000.

That's one of the statistics newly available to patients under the Payer's Bill of Rights, a California law requiring hospitals to make their price lists available to the public. But the lists of procedures and prices tell only part of the story. Much of the time, insurance companies and governments reimburse hospitals a fraction of what they officially charge.

The prices listed for Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula are the ones everyone pays. But other hospitals negotiate discounts for customers who are covered by private insurance.

At Natividad, those discounts are as deep as 70 percent off the listed prices. In a policy announced this month, the hospital said Blue Cross-Blue Shield customers do not have to pay any out-of-pocket expenses for care received there.

Hospital pricing "is very convoluted," said Geir Bakke, a senior management analyst at Natividad. "It doesn't give what the true picture is."

..."

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"Convoluted" indeed.