I read this title in the Executive Briefcase section of the South Sound Business Examiner today. It could be better titled ‘Uninsured’ save $1 Billion by using Pricedoc.
The Washington state Insurance Commissioner, Mike Kreidler, reported that the number of Washingtonians with no health insurance will soon grow to 1 million.
He also predicts that the cost of uncompensated medical care in the state will reach $1 billion annually by 2011. “The widespread and growing lack of health insurance in Washington state is hurting families, communities and our state’s economy in ways that we can no longer afford to ignore,” states Kreidler.
In seven years. the total cost of uncompensated care – uncollected medical debts and charity care by hospitals and other health providers – has increased by over 80 percent from $457 million in 2002 to a projected $830 million by the end of this year. Many of these costs are quietly passed on to the insured, as uncompensated care costs the average insured Washington family $917 a year.
10 to 13 percent is the average for residents without health insurance. This all reminds me of a marketing line I often hear on TV. Change the words and it may sound like this, “What’s that? That’s the money you could be saving with PriceDoc.”
William J. Stillwell
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Come on, now. EVERY person working in the financial area of a hospital or clinic (and many informed patients) know full well that prices for paying customers (with or without insurance) have skyrocketed along with their insurance premiums TO OFFSET AND COMPENSATE THEM FOR UNCOMPENSATED CARE; therefore, to tout grandiose figures for uncompensated care (and at the bloated prices at that) is disingenuous at best. I keep waiting to see all those doctors who were going to quit because they can’t make enough money. All they have to do is go on salary at a hospital where they are covered by a blanket malpractice insurance policy, but then $200,000 is just too degrading, isn’t it. Physicians claim that the most difficult candidate to find for hire in the medical field is a physician practitioner. In speaking with a few PA’s when they were shopping for a position, I learned that they were offered such low salaries that some secretaries make as much in major cities. All of this, of course, so that the doctor can bill at regular prices for the practitioner’s labor. Let’s have mandatory disclosure of physicians’ income and the din will quiet quickly. What eer happened to the family physicians who put the welfare of their patients first?
In the past number of year’s health insurance prices have gone up, the big companies have been making profits but the health care system in the United States is ranked outside the top 30 in the world so something is going wrong somewhere. The big health insurance companies are there to make a profit and they can’t do that without high insurance premiums and hoping people do not get ill.
If there are millions of people who cannot afford health insurance there is something wrong with the American health care which should give every person the availability to some sort of health care. there has to be ways to cut prices in health care be it lowering prescription drug cost, using cheaper standard hospital equipment and sorting out where the money is spent in a hospital. Health insurance will not be sorted overnight but if a plan to lower it and getting people with some sort of coverage then it should hopefully take the pressure off the government.