Today is Thursday, March 7, 2013. My stats today: 10 minutes of yoga, 10 minutes on the exercise ball and 45 minutes of walking = 2.5 miles for a March total of 15.0 miles. My weight was 163.2 pounds.
QUOTE from Jim Doyne: "I adore my bifocals, my false teeth fit fine, my hairpiece
fits swell, but I sure miss my mind."
My THOUGHTS today continue on medical bills in America. I'll report on some more of the medical bills for Sean Recchi at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The author, Steven Brill, went through the first 300 lines of Recchi's hospital bill printed across 8 pages. Here are some of the charges:
- 1 acetominophen tabs 325 MG. The charge was only $1.50, but it was a generic version of a Tylenol pill. You can buy 100 of them on Amazon for $1.49.
- ChEST, PA and LAT 71020 - that'a a simple X-ray. The charge was $283.00 for which MD Anderson is routinely paid $20.44 when it treats a patient on Medicare. But Sean was only 42 years old.
- ROUTINE VENIPUNCTURE - that's withdrawing blood. The charge was $36.00 each time a nurse drew blood. The $36.00 charge was accompanied by charges of $23.00 to $78.00 for each of a dozen or more lab analyses performed on the blood sample. In all, the charges for blood and other lab tests done on Recchi amounted to more than $15,000. Had Recchi been on Medicare, MD Anderson would have been paid a few hundred dollars for all those tests.
- 1 RITUXIMAB INJ 660 MG - that's an injection of 660 mg of a cancer wonder drug called Rituxan. The charge was $13,702 for one injection. The average price paid by all hospitals for this dose is about $4,000.
MD Anderson is supposedly a non-profit unit of the University of Texas. In 2012 it's operating profit was $531 million - revenues were $2,05 billion - that's a profit margin of 26% - an astonishing result for such a service-intensive enterprise.
Are any of you readers getting a little angry. I will report on many more in the days ahead.
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