Again,

Hospitals can charge what they want for services rendered.

Medicine and implant companies can do the same

Insurance companies - no one talks about malpractice insurance - are out to make a buck or 10 billion.

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"O" care is a joke.

The government needs to step in and

Limit what charges can be billed to a patient.

Again, I worked for a HMO for 30 years and if the prices that were charged when I stopped working are even 5% higher
some people are making a crapload of money.

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If you go for a hospital stay - heaven forbid - ask for an itemized bill and check to see what item/treatment you received and what you did not get.

Find out what a Diagnosis Related Group is and what the limits are for a stay for a specific illness.

To make billing easier, the hospital no longer went thru a chart to see what a patient used - either in treatments or supplies.

They use a computer program that compiles what is used in an operation or stay.

Every time a patient stays they use a template for what is used during an average stay. If you use more of the facilities/supplies, they enter that into a database.

So, that raises the average costing per stay, per patient.

That number increases the cost according to the template.

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That average stay cost is used to universally charge the insurance or bill the government.

So, if you go in for a headache and stay overnight?

They pull up the costs for that diagnosis and charge at whatever the template says.

It does not matter if you get one aspirin and are sent home or five aspirins, a CAT scan and a blood tests for that stay.

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Another billing rule is in a DRG is that a physician can only treat you for so many days for that illness and be reimbursed. Otherwise the hospital eats the extra costs.

The physician has to sign an attestation when the stay is complete - that means that he states the illness and treatment days are correct. Otherwise he can be taken to court and fined.

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I won't go into the cost of implants - pacemakers, sutures, ortho kits and stuff like that.


Healthcare costs can be reigned in by controling the cost of inventing, formulating and manufacturing med supplies.

Also, the costs involved in bring and defending against malpractice suits are crippling the people that medicine should be saving.