Hospitals adding charge to bills from doctors’ offices, outpatient surgical clinics and diagnostic centers they own
Hospitals are gobbling up doctor’s offices – and they’re bringing higher prices to patients when they do, even if a patient never sets foot on a hospital campus.
Enter the “hospital facility fee”: a charge hospitals can add to bills from doctors’ offices, outpatient surgical clinics and diagnostics centers that they own, rebranding them as “outpatient hospital departments”, even if the facility is miles from a hospital campus.
“It’s one of the most egregious examples of hospital financing at the expense of consumers,” said Liz Hagan, director of policy solutions at the United States of Care, a non-profit advocacy group that released a new report on the practice.
The report, “Behind the Bill” argues that “hospitals are at the center of a massive market failure”, where consolidation is driving price hikes for patients.
I am currently awaiting, from Amazon, a number of braces, knee, wrist, back, neck etc.
Being homeless for almost a year is not fun. Basically all of the tendons in my body are shot after walking around 2000 miles.
Why not go to a doctor?
Well, 1, I am in waaaay too much pain and can barely walk. Car got stolen long ago. No busses where I am.
2, it would take 6 weeks to wait for an appointment, where they would either tell me to see someone else (another 6 weeks), who might actually give me the same braces… or more likely I would be so exhausted from getting to the office I would not be able to adequately describe my symptoms in the 10 minutes the inevitably 45 minute late doctor would have to talk to me.
3, even with medicare, it would be far more expensive to pay the deductible and inflated costs from the medical industry as opposed to just buying the shit outright.
4, go to the ER? Even more expensive, and I’d be basically writhing in pain for hours as my injuries are not immediately life threatening, and be exposed to almost certainly actual biohazards from people with open wounds, communicable diseases and of course just violent and stupid people.
American healthcare is where it makes more sense to writhe in pain at home.
Can someone from a functioning country please adopt me or marry me or something so I can emigrate there?