Here’s a moving article in BusinessWeek titled The End of Life: Lessons from a $618,616 Death by Amanda Bennett about her husband’s seven-year battle with cancer, which highlights the dilemma over who pays the cost of healthcare and how do you put a price on a life. But the article also points to the tremendous inefficiencies and inequities in our system, including sky-high administrative costs and varying prices for drugs and procedures.
As I fought to buy my husband more time, it didn’t matter to me that the hospital charged more than 12 times what Medicare then reimbursed for a chest scan. It also didn’t matter that UnitedHealthcare reimbursed the hospital for 80% of the $3,232 price of a scan, while a few months later our new insurer, Empire BlueCross & BlueShield, paid 24% for the same test. And I didn’t have time to be thankful that the insurers negotiated the rates with the hospital so neither my employers nor I actually paid the difference between the sticker and discounted prices. Looking at that stack of documents, it is easy to see why 31% of the money spent on health care went to paperwork….
When it came to the insurance companies, the sticker price meant little since they had negotiated their own deals with the hospital. Neither the hospital nor the insurance companies would elaborate. The entire medical bill for seven years, in fact, was steeply discounted. The $618,616 was lowered to $254,176 when the insurers paid their share and imposed their discounts. The portion of the charges that were not covered for the most part vaporized. Terence and I were responsible for and paid $9,468—less than 4%….
Taking it all into account, the data showed we had made a bargain that hardly any economist looking solely at the numbers would say made sense….As costly as his treatment was, no one can say for sure if it helped to extend Terence’s life…Only I know that those months included an afternoon looking down at the Mediterranean with Georgia from a sunny balcony in southern Spain. Moving Terry into his college dorm. Celebrating our 20th anniversary with a carriage ride through Philadelphia’s cobbled streets. A final Thanksgiving game of charades with cousins Margo and Glenn.
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