TIME.com-- Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us
Time.com | Steven Brill | April 4, 2013
http://time.com/198/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/
1. Routine Care, Unforgettable Bills
When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanie’s father had been treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.
Because Stephanie and her husband had recently started their own small technology business, they were unable to buy comprehensive health insurance. For $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, they had been able to get only a policy that covered just $2,000 per day of any hospital costs. “We don’t take that kind of discount insurance,” said the woman at MD Anderson when Stephanie called to make an appointment for Sean.
Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 42. Total cost, in advance, for Sean’s treatment plan and initial doses of chemotherapy: $83,900. Charges for blood and lab tests amounted to more than $15,000; with Medicare, they would have cost a few hundred dollars.
Sean Recchi, Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 42. Total cost, in advance, for Sean’s treatment plan and initial doses of chemotherapy: $83,900. Charges for blood and lab tests amounted to more than $15,000; with Medicare, they would have cost a few hundred dollars. Credit: Claudia Susana for TIME
Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance. Stephanie got her mother to write her a check. “You do anything you can in a situation like that,” she says. The Recchis flew to Houston, leaving Stephanie’s mother to care for their two teenage children.
About a week later, Stephanie had to ask her mother for $35,000 more so Sean could begin the treatment the doctors had decided was urgent. His condition had worsened rapidly since he had arrived in Houston. He was “sweating and shaking with chills and pains,” Stephanie recalls. “He had a large mass in his chest that was … growing. He was panicked.”...snip
Much more: http://time.com/198/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/
(Steven Brill is the author of "America’s Most Admired Law Breaker," a 15-part series detailing how Johnson & Johnson took an anti-psychotic drug, Risperdal, initially intended only for the treatment of psychotic disorders, and put it in the hands of children and the elderly in violation of FDA restrictions. It was published on September 15, 2015 on The Huffington Post)
DU Thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027173483
Steven Brill (born August 22, 1950) is an American lawyer and journalist-entrepreneur. Brill's most recent reporting and book is concerned with healthcare costs.
Brill was born in Queens, New York. He is a graduate of Deerfield Academy (B.A. 1972) and Yale University law school (J.D. 1975)...
In 1989 Brill founded Court TV (now TruTV) and the network launched on July 1, 1991. Among its original anchors were Fred Graham, who was still at the network twenty years later, Cynthia McFadden and Terry Moran, who later joined ABC News....
...In 2009, Brill and two other media executives created Journalism Online to help newspapers and magazines charge for online access...
...In February 2013 Brill published Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us as a Time magazine magazine cover story. The investigation of billing practices revealed that hospitals and their executives are gaming the system to maximize revenue. Brill claims patients receive bills that have little relationship to the care provided and that the free market in American medicine is a myth, with or without Obamacare. The 24,000-plus word article took up the entire feature section of the magazine, the first time in the history of TIME...
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Brill_(journalist)
= new reply since forum marked as read
