An article appearing in a local paper today struck me as an excellent illustration of both the current problems in our health care system and a possible warning of problems with a nationalized health care system in the future.
The basic story is that a woman was admitted to the hospital with severe pneumonia. She spent more that three weeks in the hospital intensive care unit but eventually recovered enough to be released. The only condition of her release was that for a few months she would need to use a ventilator during the night.
Such a unit costs $40,000 to buy or around $4,000 a month to rent. But her insurance has a cap of $2,500 per year for durable medical equipment so they turned down her request. But they agreed to KEEP her in the hospital at a cost of nearly $10,000 a day.
After almost 3 weeks of haggling, they finally agreed to pay for the respirator but not before paying the hospital an additional $200,000 in fees. So they basically could have bought the unit five times over for that amount.
Of course we all look at this and see it as a ridiculous bureaucratic nightmare, but it is a symptom of what happens when we get giant companies running the health care system. Imagine how much of a mess it could be if we had the government running the whole thing (ask anyone on Medicare about their idiotic policies).
We all agree something needs to be done to reform health care but, as part of the process, we need to try and develop a system where these kinds of things do not happen.