Comments on Time Magazine’s 40,000-Word Essay on Medical Bills

Steven Brill's unprecedented article "Bitter Pills" occupied most of the time on March 4, I pulled my attention as I was convinced that it was yours. Editor-in-chief pointed out, "In our history, we first used all the topics of a magazine for a single story of the author: a powerful test of medical expenses in the United States."

Most of the story includes hospital billing and "Chargemaster". Friends, like some former CEOs of the large-scale medical system, said, "I will never be a bold defender of hospital charges," Chargemaster became a "crazy aunt" in the cellar "It continued.

This article is filled with interesting anecdotes and is well written, but I think that this is incomplete when explaining why US medical costs are high and growing rapidly. For example, the author has not pointed out that only a small percentage of patients (mostly uninsured) are charged at the Chargemaster fee and saw an estimate showing a recovery rate of approximately 10% You may.

Mr. Brill quoted a variety of research reports from McKinsey Global Institute to compare medical expenses in the US with health care costs in some other developed countries. However, he had overlooked one of the main findings of McKinsey: three-quarters of the higher cost in the United States was related to outpatient services, primarily physician-owned outpatients and image centers and specialized hospitals doing. In other words, the hospital is not the culprit

My friend of the CEO also said: "I am familiar with the hospital.This hospital became full during December and I lost $ 6 million, why? There are many influenza patients. This case has never been mentioned in time paper.

Current affairs articles may bring pain and embarrassment to the hospital, but the focus of the curved cost curve focuses on patients with chronic illness (keep them away from the hospital), avoiding re-hospitalization and tackling inappropriate problems is there. It reduces the administrative complexity of unnecessary care and dispersed US healthcare systems. I am not advocating Chargemaster, but in my opinion these initiatives will bring greater benefit.

Please refer to the hfm journal article in March to learn more about factors that will raise medical expenses and how to lower the growth rate.

Dean C. Coddington is a senior advisor to McManis Consulting in Denver, a member of the HFMA Colorado Chapter.

Writer and social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich appears in various national publications including Time magazine, New York Times magazine, Washington Post magazine, Esquire, Atlantic monthly magazine, Harper, Country, New Republic, social policy, Mira Bella Such. She also wrote a ceremony of blood: the origin and history of the passion of war, the worst year of our life: a greedy greedy note of 10 years, a fear of corruption: the inner life of the middle class, raging Citizen, mind of heart: America's dream and commitment flight, American health empire, witch, midwife, nurse, re-creation of love for their own good, average season: social welfare and attacks on novels, An awkward game

Time magazine published a wonderful article by Steven Brill in February - "Bitter Pill: Why does medical expenses kill us?" In this article, Brill has created some very old news to solve the fundamental problem in healthcare. This article is a bit long, so you may not want to assign the whole student. However, it is a good idea to extract several pages from each tip you provide to students. The following topics and tasks are inspired from Steven Brill's article above. Teacher, I strongly recommend you read this article and have a firm understanding of the problem and some facts. Then you can decide what you want students to read (if any) so that they can tell them what they are thinking.