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http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-february-21-2013-steven-brill
Cliffs:
-Buyers have no knowledge of the products they are buying, one sided information leads to higher costs.
-The healthcare system massively out-lobbies the military industrial complex and energy companies.
-Drugs and procedures cost many times what they would on the open market.
-The profits are are made by upper management, the doctors and nurses are not seeing the massive profits.
-This includes "not for profit" hospitals.
-medicare actually pays hospitals at the cost it takes the hospital to do the procedure, those not on medicare pay rediculous mark ups, however hospitals still make a profit off of medicare patients.
-60% of the personal bankruptcy filings each year are related to medical bills.
-Overall, ambulance revenues were more than $12 billion last year, or about 10% higher than Hollywood’s box-office take.
-Obamacare barely scratches the surface of the real corruption.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-february-21-2013-steven-brill
Recchi’s bill and six others examined line by line for this article offer a closeup window into what happens when powerless buyers — whether they are people like Recchi or big health-insurance companies — meet sellers in what is the ultimate seller’s market.
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.
This would mean that Sean Recchi’s dose of Rituxan cost the Biogen Idec–Genentech partnership as little as $300 to make, test, package and ship to MD Anderson for $3,000 to $3,500, whereupon the hospital sold it to Recchi for $13,702.
Cliffs:
-Buyers have no knowledge of the products they are buying, one sided information leads to higher costs.
-The healthcare system massively out-lobbies the military industrial complex and energy companies.
-Drugs and procedures cost many times what they would on the open market.
-The profits are are made by upper management, the doctors and nurses are not seeing the massive profits.
-This includes "not for profit" hospitals.
-medicare actually pays hospitals at the cost it takes the hospital to do the procedure, those not on medicare pay rediculous mark ups, however hospitals still make a profit off of medicare patients.
-60% of the personal bankruptcy filings each year are related to medical bills.
-Overall, ambulance revenues were more than $12 billion last year, or about 10% higher than Hollywood’s box-office take.
-Obamacare barely scratches the surface of the real corruption.