American Health Care is Broken, Especially in Texas. What Can We Do About It?

[TexasTowelie]

Physician Marty Makary’s new book shows how sky-high medical bills can ruin patients’ lives—but puts the burden on individuals to demand change.


Add yet another first place health care ranking no one wants for Texas: We have the highest hospital bills in the country.

A new study has found that Texas prices (before insurance) were on average 6.4 times higher than the Medicare-allowable amount in 2018, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins, who looked at Medicare fee-for-service claims around the country that year. The four most expensive metro areas were in Texas: Brownsville-Harlingen led the country with a markup rate of 9.4, followed by Laredo, El Paso, and McAllen-Edinburgh-Mission. All are on the Texas-Mexico border, in one of the poorest parts of the state with one of the highest uninsured rates, where residents are often forced to forgo care or get stuck with bills they simply cannot pay.

The study corresponds with the release of a new book by one of its authors, Johns Hopkins surgeon and health policy professor Marty Makary. In The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care—And How to Fix It, Makary documents his travels around the country to illustrate how U.S. health care prices have skyrocketed, leaving uninsured and insured patients on the hook for astronomical bills, with little warning or recourse. Among the most shocking revelations: Some hospitals routinely sue patients for payment and garnish their wages, and some doctors do unnecessary procedures for reasons of greed or convenience, including one obstetrician with a 95 percent C-section rate.

Recent journalism series have shined a light on particularly egregious hospital bills, often leading to dramatic reductions in the charges for patients profiled. But every bill can’t get its own news story—nor should it need to. Makary’s book is a call to action for medical professionals to speak out, businesses to look for better deals, and patients to push back on prices. But it puts much of the onus on individuals to challenge powerful insurance companies and hospitals. The book stops short of advocating for large-scale government solutions like Medicare for All, or delving too much into the elephant in the room: The gaping partisan divide over how big a role government ought to play in health care.

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/american-health-care-is-broken-especially-in-texas-what-can-we-do-about-it/

[demigoddess]

1. get the insurance companies out of it. national health care is just another

insurance plan but without taking millions out to give big bucks to the owners. Instead using those millions to pay for health care for people who need it.