Healthcare Capitalism
For the last 12 months alone, if one considers:
• The number of times EMS has had to come to get my sister off the ground.
• The number of times ambulances had to come to take her to the emergency room for evaluation.
• The week or more she spent in the hospital after each of those E.R. evaluations.
If you add up the money billed and paid out for the above, you might get a small suspicion of what is truly wrong with our For-Profit Health and Medicaid / Medicare systems here in the United States. This is not even taking into account my sister’s frequent after-hospital nursing homes stays for rehab which were for two weeks to two months every single time.
When my elderly father passed out and hit his head on the floor in a grocery store this year, he was taken by ambulance to the emergency room for evaluation, tests, and treatment. He was released from the E.R. without needing a stay in the hospital after a few hours, but the billings for that emergency were enormous. Thank God his Medicaid and Veteran Benefits covered all of that, however we were both shocked to see the amounts on the billing statements: It was in excess of $10,500.
A few years ago, when I was organizing paperwork for my sister, I remember seeing billing statements from various hospitals. One of them sticks out in my mind: It was a hospital stay for 11 days which had the total amount of $62,000. There was also an additional charge of $8,500 for an MRI/MRT, with the final total of “all accounts” being $71,500.
I remember it so vividly because the amounts listed and combined didn’t add up $71,500. I realized later that the emergency room cost was the difference: $9,500.
Medicaid and Medicare will not pay for Assisted Living. Those programs will pay partially for a nursing home, but not for assisted living, or a retirement home, with custodial care. The cost for an assisted living facility in my State is roughly $45,000 a year. That is 72% of one of my sister’s average hospital stays, not including the cost of the visit to the emergency room, the ambulance fee, or any tests.
You’d think after so many hospital and rehab stays within the same year, Medicare and Medicaid would do an evaluation of the costs and say: “Well, for this individual we should pay for the Assisted Living because it is more cost-effective than to continue this cycle.”
But they can’t do that because it is not within their discretion. They must follow the laws and mandates set forth by the Federal Government, and the Federal Government is chock-full of lobbyist influences and agendas. It makes companies, medical professionals, and shareholders money when people keep going back to hospitals over and over. That is the sad truth of it.
I am a liberal, but I am also a Capitalist. I believe in Capitalism, but only up to a point - That point being not profiting off of the pain and suffering and economic destitution of our fellow human beings.
[Cross Posted to my Blogspot]
***
• The number of times EMS has had to come to get my sister off the ground.
• The number of times ambulances had to come to take her to the emergency room for evaluation.
• The week or more she spent in the hospital after each of those E.R. evaluations.
If you add up the money billed and paid out for the above, you might get a small suspicion of what is truly wrong with our For-Profit Health and Medicaid / Medicare systems here in the United States. This is not even taking into account my sister’s frequent after-hospital nursing homes stays for rehab which were for two weeks to two months every single time.
When my elderly father passed out and hit his head on the floor in a grocery store this year, he was taken by ambulance to the emergency room for evaluation, tests, and treatment. He was released from the E.R. without needing a stay in the hospital after a few hours, but the billings for that emergency were enormous. Thank God his Medicaid and Veteran Benefits covered all of that, however we were both shocked to see the amounts on the billing statements: It was in excess of $10,500.
A few years ago, when I was organizing paperwork for my sister, I remember seeing billing statements from various hospitals. One of them sticks out in my mind: It was a hospital stay for 11 days which had the total amount of $62,000. There was also an additional charge of $8,500 for an MRI/MRT, with the final total of “all accounts” being $71,500.
I remember it so vividly because the amounts listed and combined didn’t add up $71,500. I realized later that the emergency room cost was the difference: $9,500.
Medicaid and Medicare will not pay for Assisted Living. Those programs will pay partially for a nursing home, but not for assisted living, or a retirement home, with custodial care. The cost for an assisted living facility in my State is roughly $45,000 a year. That is 72% of one of my sister’s average hospital stays, not including the cost of the visit to the emergency room, the ambulance fee, or any tests.
You’d think after so many hospital and rehab stays within the same year, Medicare and Medicaid would do an evaluation of the costs and say: “Well, for this individual we should pay for the Assisted Living because it is more cost-effective than to continue this cycle.”
But they can’t do that because it is not within their discretion. They must follow the laws and mandates set forth by the Federal Government, and the Federal Government is chock-full of lobbyist influences and agendas. It makes companies, medical professionals, and shareholders money when people keep going back to hospitals over and over. That is the sad truth of it.
I am a liberal, but I am also a Capitalist. I believe in Capitalism, but only up to a point - That point being not profiting off of the pain and suffering and economic destitution of our fellow human beings.
[Cross Posted to my Blogspot]
***