by Mark Plaster MD
The New York Times is warning that the urban patients may feel the pinch of the health care bill as it tries to rein in out of control health care costs. It notes that the goal of the bill is to cut Medicare costs by 15-30% by restraining the hospitals that cost the most. As it turns out, these hospitals are located mainly in urban areas like New York and Los Angeles. The bill will mandate that an independent body, such as the Institute of Medicine, will be tasked with studying then mandating that urban hospitals make changes in how they do business. Urban hospitals fear that they will be compared, as the Dartmouth group did, to the costs and utilization of hospitals such as the Mayo Clinic and other midwest institutions who have lower overheads and treat different types of patients. The real fear is that the IOM will recommend that the efficient hospitals will be rewarded with higher compensation while they are left with reductions. Wouldn’t that be a real kicker if the areas of the country that have supported health care reform the most,urban blue states, end up getting hurt the most by that reform.
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Focus On The Cost
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010Yeah, I agree with Howard Fineman. You got a problem with that?
Read his Newsweek article about his experiences being admitted to an Argentinian hospital and how he believes we should be focused on the costs of health care in this country.
His bill for a hospital stay with dehydration in Argentina: About $1500. Similar hospitalization in the US: $10,000 to $15,000 – if he was lucky. Money quote: “Most Americans have no idea how much their health care really costs, nor do they know how well it really works ….”
We desperately need price transparency in our health care system.
Look at the four systems in Pennsylvania that I reviewed in a previous post. If one hospital cost 4 times as much as another hospital for treating the same medical problem, would that affect anyone’s decision on where to go for medical care?
One commenter to the article noted that “Health services are often urgently needed and the consumer doesn’t have the time or inclination to shop around.” If people shop around for weeks to find the best deal on a car and spend all Sunday morning going through newspaper ads to find the cheapest head of broccoli at the grocery store, I have no sympathy for those who “don’t have the time or inclination” to research where they would want to go if their life was on the line or if they needed specialized surgery.
Regardless of what health care reform measures are taken, we still need to be educated consumers with our most important assets – our lives.
Posted in Funding Crisis, Health care reform, News Commentary | 36 Comments »