2030 Shoot at the Clouds but Expect Only a Drizzle

2030 Shoot at the Clouds but Accept only a Drizzle

 \Can anyone figure out the meaning of a medical bill?  Patient A was billed 76-thousand dollars as of the end of last month.  Blue Cross paid 14-thousand. The patient paid 16-hundred.

You’d think this would be for fixing every bone in the body… or excising a cancerous brain tumor.  Nope. Just routine stuff. Fixing this or that which moved out of place or removing easily reached faulty tissue.

Remember the TV series and the movies, “The Six Million Dollar Man?”  They ran in the 1970s.  Colonel Austin, the lead character had six million dollars’ worth of replacement parts. Six million in today’s money?  They’d have to rename the series “The 380-Million Dollar Man,” and that’s with an average annual inflation rate of under two percent a year.

If the Six Million dollar guy went into the hospital this year, parts providers would add an extra 22 million.  So maybe the name should be the 402-million dollar man.

That’s the bad news.  The good news is that no one pays list price, even though it seems we do. The sticker price is fiction.

Except for things like aspirin at 50 cents a pill that sells in MegaMart for two bucks per hundred.  And TV rental.  If Dish or Cablevision charged you at hospital rates, your $100 a month bill would range in the low four figures.

It’s a wonder that they don’t charge you for every push of the emergency call button.  There have been reports that if it’s a routine nursing need you will be charged one fee.  Urgent would be available at a higher price and impending death would cost even more.   They don’t do this yet, but it’s only because they haven’t figured out how to make the call button multitask.  The airlines are working on a similar device for calling the flight attendant. 

Then there’s coding.  Coding is what determines what the insurance company will pay for getting you repaired.  Every tiny procedure has a code number… a secret code number.  The data entry clerk knows what they mean or can look them up in The Random House Dictionary of Secret Medical Codes (also available via subscription on the internet.)

You don’t have one of those books or websites. Sometimes the information leaks, though.  Here’s one example. The medical code 408B-63554a is a new travel pack of generic paper tissues. 408N-63554b is one that’s been opened by someone else. “A” costs $15.00. “B” is available for $13.50 if it’s no more than half used.

So billing is a combination of secret codes, manual data entry, enormous prices no one expects to be paid and the at-cost delivery of an itemized bill that runs more than ten pages, as many do.

By now you may be asking “isn’t there a way around this? Something simple to follow and to question?” Of course not. They’ll keep seeding the clouds and take what they get. If you’re lucky.

But like so much else these days, don’t be surprised if people are staying up nights to think of something worse.

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Remembering two fine reporters who passed away Monday. Sander Vanocur, 91 and Cokie Roberts, 75. He of the effects of dementia, she of complications of cancer.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ® 

Comments?  Send ‘em to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019