Facility Greed

Are you ready for some more hospital greed?   In the past, hospitals bought up doctors so they could control where the patients were being sent.  In other words, all admissions, x-rays, labs, etc. came to the hospital that owned the practice.   Well, since there are a lot of administrators to feed, the hospitals had to find a way to make more money off the doctors (and patients).   Do you know that if the facility where you are treated is part of a hospital network, they can charge facility fees under the federal Medicare rules.  One patient, in this article, had a $145, five-minute, skin tag removal in a doctor’s office located in a hospital-owned building and was charged a $705 facility fee for “operating room service.” Are you kidding me!?!  I am so disgusted right now.  The doctor, by the way, does not get any of this.   I guarantee he or she is on what is called a RVU system and that cryotherapy is less than one work RVU or $40.  So the hospital is trying to get $850.   And that is typical.  My friend Josh over at www.atlas.md showed me his lab costs to his patients.  He doesn’t inflate the costs to gouge them and make a profit.  When you see it you realize that hospitals are charging around ten times the amount it costs for regular labwork.  Back to our story.   The hospital said its fee “covers all sorts of things, such as the scale he was weighed on, the blood pressure equipment he used, the room where the doctor saw him and the clerical staff.”  Now you know why I can’t stand most hospital administrators.   The article goes on to say that class action suits are on their way because these fees aren’t being disclosed.  But so what?  They may disclose them but they won’t drop the price.  The only way that will happen is if docs do more cash pay practices and work with local labs to make deals like Josh did at Atlas.MD.   That is how true capitalism can negate this greed by administrators.   And before you say a national healthcare system would fix this I want to point out that this whole ordeal came under federal Medicare rules, which is a national healthcare system.