Must Read....Beyond the Headline
Posted on Mon, Mar 15, 2010 @ 04:54 PM
A recent article in the Boston Globe was headlined "Pricey Imaging Pushes Up Heath Costs", but one has to look deeper into the story to unveil an interesting nugget truth of which the general public is unaware and that current health reform ideas are not addressing.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state's largest insurer, said that in 2006, 40 percent of the MRIs it paid for were done at hospitals, compared with 50 percent by 2008. That has significant cost implications, said Andrew Dreyfus, executive vice president for health care services, because the insurer pays an average $700 for an MRI in a freestanding clinic, but twice that much at a hospital. Entire article.
The fact that hospitals charge much more for everything they do compared with outpatient centers is just the tip of the iceberg of waste in our current hospital-based healthcare system. For more on this read Massachusetts Healthcare - Not Miracle, but Smoke and Mirrors.
It is ironic that in the state that is touted as the first experiment in universal health care, that hospitals are identified as driving up the cost of care while at the same time Boston Medical Center is suing the state of Massachusetts for non-payment of services.
by Vernon Rowe, MD