This is yet another example of in-your-face medical pricing that often reflects not what things really cost but what healthcare businesses think they can get away with.
Birker-Hake may have settled accounts with Providence, but Breg wanted an additional $200 for the cloth sling she’d been given — or as the bill more grandly named it, the DLX Shoulder Immobilizer L.
I’m not laying this disparity at the feet of a single maker of orthopedic gear. But what Birker-Hake is going through helps underline how goofy our system is., and you quickly understand how our healthcare spending obscenely surpasses that of other developed countries that long ago decided gouging the sick is not an acceptable business practice — and took regulatory steps to prevent it.
Most other businesses disclose their prices up front, which is only fair and is crucial to a competitive market. Healthcare is one of the few industries that tells you what things cost after the fact, when you have little recourse but to pay.Birker-Hake was surprised, to say the least, that the sling she’d been given at the hospital would carry a $200 price tag — especially after she’d already coughed up about $1,800 of her own money to add to the $4,400 paid by her insurer.
Now she’s wondering what to do. “It’s a piece of fabric with a shoulder strap and a belt,” she said. “Two hundred dollars seems pretty unreasonable.”
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