The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care--and How to Fix It | 
so-so⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5. This book was a very informative discussion on many of the problems/barriers that both patients and providers face in healthcare. As a Physician Assistant, this was very eye opening to read and has given me some information to bring to the table at work. I did find some parts dry and found it difficult to focus and want to read if it was a long week at work.
pickThis was a very informative book. I learned that hospitals sue patients if they cannot pay their bills, take away from their paychecks, put liens on their homes. I learned about helpful programs and more predatory practices. The author knows there is a real problem unique to American ‘Healthcare‘ and wants it to change. He doesn‘t mention Universal Healthcare, but transparency. We need an expanded MFA. NOW. Healthcare is a human right!
The medical community at large ingrained in all of us that opioids were not addictive and urged us to prescribe generously. And that‘s exactly what we did.
The obstetrician on call that day had just completed his scheduled office visits for the day. He had a routine. When on call, he finished seeing patients in his office by 2:00. Then he would head to the hospital and perform a C-section on any woman in labor, whether she needed it or not. That way, he made it home by five.
⬆️This is reproductive injustice.
More and more people are risking their lives by taking the popular ridesharing services Uber or Lyft to the hospital even for medical emergencies. Why would they take a gamble on a much slower form of transportation? They‘re desperate to avoid the predatory billing of ground ambulance companies.
Hugh survived the bite, but months later he felt he might die again when he got a bill for $43,514 from the air ambulance company. His BCBS Insurance paid $13, 827. The air ambulance company turned around and billed him for the $29,687 balance. He said he felt a “slow, boiling anger” when he opened the bill. “That was actually more traumatic than when I realized I was bitten by a rattlesnake,” he said.
Between 2007 and 2016 alone, the average price of an air ambulance transport charged by one company went from $13,000 to $50,000.
HOW THE FUCK IS THIS LEGAL???!!!
RestoringMedicine.org gives people ranging from doctors to community members the resources they can use to address predatory billing, suing, medical overscreenings, and other unfair healthcare practices in their communities.
But we shouldn‘t have this problem in the first place. And this doesn‘t fix it.
These are our patients. These are not the patients of our hospital billing departments. These people came to see us as doctors because they were sick or injured, and we should respond in the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath. How can we take an oath, treat a patient, and then allow their lives to be ruined financially?
HEALTHCARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT!
As a surgeon, I can tell you firsthand that patients and their families are also vulnerable when they seek medical care. There should be no excuse for taking advantage of them. But American healthcare is so crazy that as long as you are alive, you are susceptible to being taken advantage of by the game. Ironically, once you‘re dead, federal law protects you.
I don‘t understand how a hospital can welcome a patient and then turn around and put them in medical bankruptcy.—-Dr. Keith Smith, anesthesiologist and healthcare reformer
We need an expanded Medicare For All. And we need it NOW.
pickMarty succinctly summarizes the real issues in US healthcare: 1) price gouging 2) too little value from middlemen and 3) overtreatment. This is the first book to also address the problem that brokers who are hired and trusted by HR dept to put together insurance plans are often profiting from this problematic system. Good intro to anyone who ever got a high health bill and wondered why.
