Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S.
August 14, 2013
The US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders
combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada,
Brazil, Spain, and Australia. Despite that, the US ranks dead last in terms of quality of care among industrialized
countries, and Americans are far sicker and live shorter lives than people in
other developed nations. How is this possible? The short answer is: We’re being
fleeced. Journalist and author Steven Brill recently discussed this very issue
in a Time magazine investigative piece, writing:6
“Simple lab work done during a few days in the hospital can cost more
than a car. A trip to the emergency room for chest pains that turn out to be
indigestion brings a bill that can exceed the price of a semester at college.
When we debate health care policy in America, we seem to jump right to the issue
of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why
exactly are the bills so high?”
In his article, Brill gives numerous examples of shocking markups on many
hospital charges, such as $1.50 for a generic acetaminophen tablet, when you can
buy an entire bottle of 100 tablets for that amount, $18 per Accu-chek diabetes
test strip that you can purchase for about 55 cents apiece, or $283.00 for a
simple chest X-ray, for which the hospital routinely gets $20.44 for when it
treats a Medicare patient.
Even Hospital Administrators Have a Hard Time Justifying Their Costs…
The US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Australia. Despite that, the US ranks dead last in terms of quality of care among industrialized countries, and Americans are far sicker and live shorter lives than people in other developed nations. How is this possible? The short answer is: We’re being fleeced. Journalist and author Steven Brill recently discussed this very issue in a Time magazine investigative piece, writing:6
“Simple lab work done during a few days in the hospital can cost more than a car. A trip to the emergency room for chest pains that turn out to be indigestion brings a bill that can exceed the price of a semester at college. When we debate health care policy in America, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why exactly are the bills so high?”In his article, Brill gives numerous examples of shocking markups on many hospital charges, such as $1.50 for a generic acetaminophen tablet, when you can buy an entire bottle of 100 tablets for that amount, $18 per Accu-chek diabetes test strip that you can purchase for about 55 cents apiece, or $283.00 for a simple chest X-ray, for which the hospital routinely gets $20.44 for when it treats a Medicare patient.
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