On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 11:49 AM, Marv Gandall wrote: > > On Dec 31, 2015, at 8:48 AM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > > I will take a contrarian view on this that is sure to be hated by my > PEN-L audience. > > > > Anyone who thinks that being forced to pay $8000 out of a $82,000 income > to treat a life-threatening disease is a great human tragedy really needs > to go out more. > > This is certainly a contrarian - and wrongheaded - view. It’s common > knowledge that most of that $8000 is pure profit for the drug companies who > spend more on marketing than on research and development. >
Oh, I don't disagree at all about the drug company profiteering. And not only drug companies, insurers, hospitals and all kinds of for-profit operators skim huge amounts of money out of the dysfunctional US health care system. There are many victims produced by the actions of these operators. Many of those victims are homeless, black, undocumented, uninsured or under-insured. These groups are probably largely invisible to the average, liberal, middle-class NYT reader. But surely we on PEN-L can do better? Someone reading this NYT article may be forgiven for thinking that the worst thing that can happen to you under the US health care system is being stuck with a copay that is about 10% of your annual income. And that seems like a cruel joke considering the kind of outrages that actually on everyday in this system. If you want to read about some true horror stories, try this classic 2013 Time magazine piece: (the specific practices outlined in this article are probably not possible anymore because of Obamacare, but I suspect they have just been replaced by a different set of hustles. Where are the journalists on this beat?) http://www.uta.edu/faculty/story/2311/Misc/2013,2,26,MedicalCostsDemandAndGreed.pdf ----------------------------snip The $21,000 Heartburn Bill One night last summer at her home near Stamford, Conn., a 64-year-old former sales clerk whom I’ll call Janice S. felt chest pains. She was taken four miles by ambulance to the emergency room at Stamford Hospital, officially a nonprofit institution. After about three hours of tests and some brief encounters with a doctor, she was told she had indigestion and sent home. That was the good news. The bad news was the bill: $995 for the ambulance ride, $3,000 for the doctors and $17,000 for the hospital — in sum, $21,000 for a false alarm.
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