Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 12, 2019

What does $2 or $3 thousand more matter since you won’t be able to pay any of it?

And that’s why health care in the US is the most costly in the world, by a lot.

Better get it while you can, there won’t be a next time.

The nostalgia! It’s so funny to remember that $7,000.00 used to be considered a big hospital bill. Our system has improved so much since those dark days!

Everyone wants tort reform and hates lawyers until they need them.If the anesthesiologist is careless and over sedates your 10 year old during his tonsils operation and he is brain damages I doubt you will be happy with a tort reform limited settlement.

$7,000 in treatments? What did they give her? A glass of water and a couple of aspirin?

Yup, there it is.

Better to be broke than sorry! Also, this is from the early 90s, so you’ll need to almost double (1.78) the amount to get today’s dollars.

$7000? That can’t be right, that’s far too little for a night in the hospital and a bunch of tests.

I quibble with the phrase “health-care system”. It’s misleading. In the 1st place, it’s not a system. A system is something that’s designed to achieve a particular end, in a coordinated way, usually as efficiently as possible. (Think computers or automobiles.) In the 2nd place, it’s not about care, it’s about capitalism.

What we have in lieu of a true health-care system (you know, the kind that every other industrialized democracy on the planet has and loves) is a haphazard scattering of profit centers concentrated in areas where the money is, with vast swaths of the nation under- or un-served. By contrast, the US Postal Service and the public schools are true systems that serve every square centimetre of the country. (And yes, the metric system too is a true system, well and intentionally designed, not like ACHU, the Accidental Collection of Heterogeneous Units that the US alone in the world still clings to.)

So I recommend using the phrase “health-insurance industry”, because it’s more accurate.

Now is when Doctors order painful tests always a way to get you out of the hospital ie Electromyogram.

And, if any of the Extra Tests they run while playing CYA cause her any additional “Problems”, she can sue for That, too.

$70,000 for a night or two, I’d believe.

I have two comments, First, the healthcare system is not driven by the free market rules, We , the customers do not shop for healthcare. WE may shop for health insurance or for a primary care Doctor but we do not have the cost data to make a cost based decision when we are ill. Secondly, I have great Health Insurance. when I have to go in the ER, I usually have to be packed off to a University facility for a more advanced procedure, When the bill is presented to the Insurance Company, they paid what they say is the allowed amount which is a significantly smaller faction than the billed amount, I pay the deductible and copay and everyone seems happy. Between what the insurances pays and what I pay, the amount the biller gets is as low as 10% of billed and never more than 50% of billed. My deductible is capped at $350. a year and my max out of pocket is capped at $5000 per year. That includes drugs.

The natural result of payment made by third parties out of the ptient-physician relationship. If consumers spent their own money backed by a high deductible health insurance policy, unnecessary testing would plummet.

$7000? Today just the admission to ER costs that much.

This Mom knows how to speak the Doctor’s language!