<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br></div><div><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 16px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Tahoma; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; font-size: 18px; "><b>Horror Care: How Private Health Care is Shortening Our Lives</b></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Tahoma; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">By Paul Buchheit</font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Steven Brill's <a href="http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/#ixzz2Lk6nOS9h"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">article</span></a> in Time Magazine about the cost of private health care is likely to make most of his readers very angry. Angry about the prices we pay, about the lives that are devastated, and about the fact that we're <a href="http://www.salon.com/2009/03/09/healthcare_5/"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">one of the few developed countries</span></a> without adequate health care for its citizens.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Economists have told us that the profit motive of privatization comes with an "invisible hand" that automatically corrects inequities in the market. It hasn't worked that way for health care. The personal stories recounted below, and some additional facts to complement them, make it clear that an essential human need has been turned into a product that benefits a few people at the expense of many others.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><b>$15,000 for Blood Tests</b></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Brill's article begins with the story of a 42-year-old Ohio man named Sean Recchi, who traveled to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for treatment of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He and his wife Stephanie had paid $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, for insurance that covered $2,000 per day of hospital costs. His financial troubles started when MD Anderson told him, "We don't take that kind of discount insurance."</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">But he had to go to the hospital. His wife recalled that he was "sweating and shaking with chills and pains. He had a large mass in his chest that was..growing. He was panicked."</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Stephanie asked her mother to write a check for $48,900.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Sean waited for 90 minutes while the hospital confirmed that the check had cleared. He was also required to advance MD Anderson $7,500 from his credit card. The total cost for the initial treatment and chemotherapy was $83,900, including a $15,000 charge for lab tests for which a Medicare patient would have paid a few hundred dollars, $283 for an x-ray that Medicare categorizes as a $20 charge, and $1.50 for a generic version of a Tylenol pill.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><br><b>Hospital Boss $1,845,000 -- Medicare Boss $170,000</b></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">MD Anderson provided this statement in its defense: "The issues related to health care finance are complex...[our] billing and collection practices are similar to those of other major hospitals and academic medical centers." The company made $531 million in profits in 2010, on total revenues of about $2 billion. That 26 percent profit margin was, in the author's words, "an astounding result for such a service-intensive enterprise."</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">It's true. A <a href="http://payupnow.org/rankings/index_industry.htm"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">PayUpNow.org analysis</span></a> of Medical Services providers showed that from 2008 to 2010, Humana had a profit margin of about 5%, United Health Group just under 7 percent, and WellPoint about 8 percent.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Last year's salary for Ronald DePinho, the president of MD Anderson, was $1,845,000. That's over twice the compensation paid to the president of the University of Texas medical complex that includes MD Anderson. It's about <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/168026/beyond-corporate-capitalism-not-so-wild-dream"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">ten times the compensation</span></a> of the federal Medicare Administrator in 2010.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><b>Privatization Has Failed Us: The Deadly Facts</b></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Our private health care system has indeed failed us. We have by far the most expensive system in the developed world. The <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/01-4"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">cost of common surgeries</span></a> is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Everyone has their hand in the money pot: insurance companies, pharmaceutical firms, physicians, hospitals, equipment suppliers, the <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/06/why_the_american_medical_assoc.html"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">AMA</span></a>. Steven Brill notes that the medical industry has spent $5.36 billion on lobbying in the past 15 years, compared to $1.53 billion spent by the defense/aerospace industry and $1.3 billion spent by oil and gas interests.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">As reported by the <a href="http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/data/incpovhlth/2010/highlights.html"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">Census Department</span></a>, 50 million Americans can't afford the price of health insurance. According to a <a href="http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">study</span></a> by the American Journal of Public Health, nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance. A <a href="http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Newsletters/Washington-Health-Policy-in-Review/2011/Nov/November-14-2011/Sickest-Adults-in-US.aspx"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">2001 survey</span></a> revealed that, because of cost, forty-two percent of sick Americans skipped doctor's visits and/or medication purchases. Even careseekers with insurance can end up uncovered, as in California, where a survey found that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/26/us-private-insurance-healthcare-system-failure"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">one out of four claims were denied</span></a> by private insurers, even when treatment was recommended by the patient's physician. The after-effects can be disastrous. A 2007 <a href="http://www.pnhp.org/new_bankruptcy_study/Bankruptcy-2009.pdf"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">study at the Harvard Medical School</span></a> found that 62 percent of US bankruptcies were a result of medical expenses.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Meanwhile, the evidence for incompetence in the private sector is overwhelming. <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2011/09/20/medicare-is-more-efficient-than-private-insurance/"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">Data</span></a> from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) shows that since 1997 private insurance costs have risen much faster than Medicare costs. According to the <a href="http://www.cahi.org/cahi_contents/resources/pdf/CAHIMedicareTechnicalPaper.pdf"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">Council for Affordable Health Insurance</span></a>, medical administrative costs as a percentage of claims are about three times higher for private insurance than for Medicare. A <a href="http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/health_plan.html"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">study</span></a> by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Public Citizen found that health care bureaucracy last year cost the United States $399.4 billion. The <a href="http://iom.edu/Reports/2012/Best-Care-at-Lower-Cost-The-Path-to-Continuously-Learning-Health-Care-in-America.aspx"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">U.S. Institute of Medicine</span></a> reports that the for-profit system wastes $750 billion a year on waste, fraud, and inefficiency. As a percent of GDP, we spend almost twice the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/health/healthpoliciesanddata/oecdhealthdata2012-frequentlyrequesteddata.htm"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">OECD average</span></a>.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><b>Private Health Care Has Shortened Our Lives</b></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">When we look beyond industry malfeasance to the effects on human life, we find that Americans are paying the ultimate price. We now have a <a href="http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13497"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">shorter life expectancy</span></a> than almost all other developed countries. A <a href="http://sites.nationalacademies.org/xpedio/groups/dbassesite/documents/webpage/dbasse_080620.pdf"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">National Research Council study</span></a> placed the United States LAST among 17 high-income countries.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">It wasn't always this way. Since 1960 there has been a <a href="http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/oecdhealthdata2012-frequentlyrequesteddata.htm"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">close parallel</span></a> between worsening life expectancy and increased health care costs as a percentage of GDP. Most disturbing is our <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11924-the-measure-of-a-nation-challenges-illusions-of-american-superiority"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">growing infant mortality rate</span></a> relative to other countries. A <a href="http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc9_eng.pdf"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">UNICEF study</span></a> places the U.S. 22nd out of 24 OECD countries in "children's health and well-being."</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">In startling contrast, Americans covered by Medicare <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-progress-report/44-years-of-medicare-succ_b_247834.html"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">INCREASED their life expectancy</span></a> by 3.5 years from the 1960s to the turn of the century.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><b>Another Horror Story</b></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="text-decoration: underline; "><a href="http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/#ixzz2Lk6nOS9h">Janice S.</a></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">, a 64-year-old woman in Connecticut, was rushed to the hospital in what turned out to be heartburn. She was charged $995 for the ambulance ride, $3,000 for the doctors, and $17,000 for the hospital - $21,000 for a three-hour precautionary checkup.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Part of the hospital bill was a special stress test, employing radioactive dye and a CT scan, which cost $7,997.54, about six times more than the hospital's regular stress test. Medicare would have paid the hospital $554 for the special test.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">For many of the lab tests, Janice was charged about ten to fifteen times more than the Congress-supervised Medicare rate. The hospital's own filings to the Department of Health and Human Services showed that lab tests in 2010 brought in $293 million from patients, while costing the hospital just $28 million.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">When confronted with the details, a hospital spokesperson said, "Those are not our real rates..It's a list we use internally in certain cases, but most people never pay those prices."</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><b>And More..</b></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Emilia Gilbert was 62 when she fell at home and bloodied her face, spent six hours (most of it waiting) at the at the Bridgeport, CT Hospital emergency room, and received a bill for over $9,000. She even got charged for bandages and tubing, which are supposed to be part of the $900 emergency room charge. The hospital sued her for the money.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Steve H. went to Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma City for back treatment. He had $45,181 remaining on the $60,000 annual payout limit from his union's health insurance plan. For basic medical and surgical supplies he was billed about $8,000, including charges for a surgical gown, a blanket warmer and a marking pen. The most significant cost was the Medtronic stimulator that was implanted in his back, which cost the hospital $19,000, but cost Steve almost $50,000. His total bill at the institution run by the Sisters of Mercy ended up at nearly $87,000.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Steven D. (a pseudonym) was diagnosed with lung cancer in January 2011. When he died eleven months later, his wife Alice was left with a bill for over $900,000.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">Many of the patients, or their family members, interviewed by Mr. Brill took advantage of a growing industry called medical billing advocacy, by which outlandish bill totals can be negotiated downward. The initial hospital bill is apparently an attempt by the hospital to get all they can from a patient. Steven D's $900,000 bill for cancer treatment was dramatically reduced, to about $170,000, but Alice was forced to literally sell the family farm to pay off most of her debt.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); min-height: 16px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "></span><br></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><b>Human Need as a Product For Sale</b></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">An underlying theme through the Brill article was the vulnerability of patient's spouses or other relatives, who were not in the appropriate state of mind to challenge, or even consider, the excessive costs of treatment. As the wife of a terminally ill patient stated, "Are you kidding? I'm dealing with a husband who had just been told he has Stage IV cancer. That's all I can focus on...You think I looked at the items on the bills? I just looked at the total."</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">By treating the essential human need of health care as a product, the hospitals and doctors and drug companies and insurance companies and equipment suppliers are lured toward a pot of money, with little regard for the effects of their profit-making on average Americans.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; ">The solution, of course, is <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/02/28-5"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; text-decoration: underline; ">Medicare for all</span></a>. If, that is, the invisible hand of the market ever reaches out to average Americans.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Times; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); "><span> This article was published at NationofChange at: <a href="http://www.nationofchange.org/horror-care-how-private-health-care-shortening-our-lives-1362411408"><span style="text-decoration: underline; letter-spacing: 0px; ">http://www.nationofchange.org/horror-care-how-private-health-care-shortening-our-lives-1362411408</span></a>. All rights are reserved.</span></p></div><div><span><br></span></div></body></html>