So I was driving home from work earlier this week and heard a commercial on the radio for a chiropractor in La Crosse who offered his first consultation for forty-nine dollars. I remember thinking in my head, “I wonder if my insurance would cover this…” But then I realized that it’s only forty-nine dollars, so who really cares, right? But I quickly remembered an article published on Monday called No guarantees: 3 tales of insurance disaster that was written on msnbc.com; specifically the following sentence:
Thomas came through the operation well, but with a $19,000 hospital bill to show for it. Even with the hospital’s no-insurance discount of $7,500, the bill topped $12,000.
When I read that sentence on Monday, it never occurred to me as a problem, but after hearing the commercial on the radio, it hit me that the current bill that Congress has been trying to push through for the better part of six months could, and more than likely, do absolutely nothing to fix the problem.
This article essentially points out that if you have insurance, this hospital is going to overcharge you for your treatment because you are not paying for it, your insurance is. But that $7,500 extra that your insurance company is paying is probably getting passed directly on to you. The hospital is making roughly an additional 65% because you are not the paying customer. In one way or another, you are going to get hit with that cost somehow.
I believe everyone should have health care, and I also believe that if people are given an option, many still won’t get it. I mean think about, this issue is pretty much the same as retirement and social security. I would argue that most people would rather spend money on stuff today than save it for retirement or pay for something like health insurance. Why should someone who does plan for these situations be punished because other people do not? As the saying goes, “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
The solution should be controlling the cost of health care, not necessarily how to pay for it. Why not treat hospitals the same way we treat utility companies — we are looking at an oligopoly with hospitals anyways, right? It’s not practical to have hospitals compete over price, but there should probably be some sort of pricing guidelines so patients, who are really customers, do not end up paying too much. Fix what hospitals charge for health care and the problem should go away.
After all, insurance profits aren’t that good.