Evil Cost-shifting in Hospital Administration.

[jesse_the_k]

Probably news to nobody reading here, but it was such stunning evidence of greed in the hospital industry I just had to memorialize it.

This is from 17 May 2013 NYTimes article on the East Coast hospitals with the highest billing and payment. There's such a disconnect between what's charged and what's customarily paid that one must account for both. The users who pay the most are the uninsured; Medicare pays the least, and most insurance companies negotiate something in-between.

begin quote 
First, [new owners] converted Bayonne Medical from a nonprofit to a for-profit hospital at a time when such hospitals were a rarity in New Jersey. Next, they moved to sever existing contracts with large private insurers, essentially making Bayonne Medical an out-of-network hospital for most insurance plans.
Under New Jersey law, patients treated in a hospital emergency room outside their provider’s network have to pay out of pocket only what they would have paid if the hospital was in the network. But an out-of-network hospital can bill the patient’s insurer at essentially whatever rate it cares to set. While the insurers can negotiate with the hospital, they generally end up paying more than they would have under a contractual agreement.

In recent years, Bayonne Medical put up digital billboards highlighting the short waits in its emergency rooms in an effort to attract more patients. Insurers complained that the hospital was seeking to take advantage of the higher rates it could charge. quote ends

Excerpt links to original story.

This is like buying a towing company, distributing your equipment to all roads in town, and then digging ditches across the road to guarantee business. As laceblade would undoubtedly say, This shit is wrong!

ETA to fix erroneous time travel