“Surprise” Medical Bills are Actually Deliberate

[TrueTomHarley]

In the US, one can easily be presented with a “surprise” medical bill upon being released from the hospital. This happens when one of those involved in patient treatment turns out to be a non-network provider. The resulting bill can be tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars for a hospital admittance that was covered by insurance.

I had always assumed—I think most people did, if not all people—that the cause was simply blundering incompetence, that the US health care system is so disorganized, cobbled together haphazard one piecemeal step at a time, that nobody has a grasp on it all, and everyone feels bad about the monster that they have collectively produced, but it is typical inept human social evolution and nobody has a clue what to do about it. 

I never dreamed that it was deliberate. But that turns out to be so. Money flows from this planned mess to the hedge funds that back it. Hospitals themselves become dependent upon the system the former have foisted upon them. It is no more than “follow the money”—something I routinely do in order to get to the bottom of things but forgot to do it here. 

When bills are proposed to correct the abuses—seemingly everyone would back them—instead, opposition is intense:

https://khn.org/news/investors-deep-pocket-push-to-defend-surprise-medical-bills/

 

 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

There are people that do not understand the relationship gasoline has to the internal combustion engine.

These people are "pedestrians".