Surprise Emergency Room Bill
Trying to figure out the most forked up part of our healthcare is quite the task.
Is it the hospitals that charge insane amounts of money from basics like typing in your social security number to bandaids and gauze all the way up to basic check up procedures and testing to complex surgery and overnight car?
Is it the insurance companies that have gone to high deductibles with co-pays filled with exception clauses limiting their liability and giving them reason not to pay despite the incredible premiums?
Could the worst be the pharma industry consolidating rights to medications and then charging whatever figure they think can maximize profits with zero regard for availability and life?
What if it is the government systems that help to inflate these values by not being able to negotiate drug prices or by covering unnecessary hospital visits and increased paperwork requirements increasing administration costs?
Could it be the health providers system of paid referral system that leads to a long road of specialists, tests and scans on what ends up being a multi-year quest for a diagnosis that isn't really needed?
Is it the referal system set up with surgery that allows medical equipment sales people in the post surgery care areas of hospitals to pitch unnecessary high cost medical equipment on to drugged up patients or their overconcerned loved ones because they know insurance companies will pay for it and the doctors allow it because of huge kick backs?
I hope I never need trauma care. Everything else I can get done out of country and I'm well traveled enought to know just how much American exceptionalism has lost all justification. There are dozens of other countries I would prefer to get medical treatment over the US for all but a few diagnosis. In America, people are simply commodities and the people have to pay a massive surcharge to be treated as such.