A $20,243 BIKE CRASH

Zuckerberg Hospital finds a novel way to shock us

In a recent article published by VOX, Nina Dang, 24, broke  her arm in a bicycle crash on April 3, 2018. A bystander called an ambulance, and Nina was taken to the emergency room at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG -- so renamed because of a $75 million dollar gift from the founder of FaceBook), where doctors x-rayed her her arm and took a CT scan of her brain and spine.  When she left, she had her arm in a splint; she had been given pain medication and a recommendation to follow up with an orthopedist.

A few months later, she got the bill: $24,074.50. Of that, her insurer -- Premera Blue Cross, would cover only $3830.79 -- which it thought was fair for the services provided. The balance  due -- $20,243.71 -- the hospital threatened to send to collections in mid-December.

Why? The reason is that ZSFG was not in Ms. Dang's network. Though regrettable, that's not surprising; it can happen. What's surprising is that ZSFG couldn't be in her network, because it is not in any network whatever.  Virtually all other hospitals contrive to arrive at contracts with at least a few private insurers, but not ZSFG.  Although they are the trauma center for the whole city, they recognize only the public insurers -- e.g. Medicare and Medicaid. For those on private insurance -- any private insurance -- the sky is the limit. Their idea is that if you're not old or poor -- you'll be able to pay.

The obvious trouble with that is that there are people in the middle, such as Ms. Dang, for whom such charges are catastrophic. And when an ambulance is speeding off with you,  no matter what your financial resources, you can be less than able to tell the paramedics where to take you. And even if you can direct them, the chances are that you won't know what hospital is the most appropriate  for you. (My wife, in an ambulance, was indeed asked where she wanted to go, and made a choice which afterwards she regretted). 

Once in the hospital, you could, as one person did, recite to everyone who came close to you the formula: "Are you in my network? If not, I DECLINE TREATMENT." One woman in Vox's study did just that, so nobody touched her. But she was billed more than $5000 anyway!

The hospitals are playing a game with us, a game they are bound to win because they have stacked the deck against us. For example, there is what they term a "facility fee" charged for simply walking (or being carried) through the door. Only they won't tell us ahead of time what that fee is, and it differs for every hospital.  

Thus the hospitals, like much of the rest of the medical establishment, take advantage of our suffering to make profits we would most certainly try to avoid if we were in possession of our full abilities.

If this truly is the American Way, then I'm not proud to be an American. But I think this is not the American Way, which has far more reserves of kindness than do the corporations who have us in thrall, and the government they have bought to act in their behalf.

Dio

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