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Thursday, February 28th, 2013

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

Author:     STEVEN BRILL
Source:     Time
Publication Date:     26-Feb-13
 Link: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us
Stephan:   Everyone who reads SR knows my views on the illness profit system. I have written extensively about this here, in my column in Explore, and in the Huffington Post. We have the worst healthcare amongst the advanced nations of the world because the purpose of our system is not health but profit. It is appalling, and it goes on year after year and, for the most part we are as docile as sheep. This is an excellent fact-based essay on the subject that is well worth your attention. It is the longest article Time Magazine has ever published and it focuses on the financial arrangements of our system. There is only one solution to this, voting in different people. It works.

1. Routine Care, Unforgettable Bills
When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanie’s father had been treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.

Because Stephanie and her husband had recently started their own small technology business, they were unable to buy comprehensive health insurance. For $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, they had been able to get only a policy that covered just $2,000 per day of any hospital costs. ‘We don’t take that kind of discount insurance,

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