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IN YOUR PRIME
The Cost of Doing Nothing
Q. Recently, my wife was hospitalized for three days, being treated for pneumonia. The total bill came to $11,781.85 (see
itemized statement). We’re both insured by Medicare (Parts A and B), as well as a secondary carrier; my concern is not with
the treatment (it was effective), or the hospital (people were caring), but with the costs. I question if our society can
continue to support a system that is so expensive. Is anyone keeping a sharp eye on hospital costs?
--Robbie W. Parker, suburban Atlanta, GA
A. I’m reluctant to deliver a short answer, but in a word: “No. No one is training a sharp eye, or a red pencil, on hospital
costs.” At least, no one with the power to yell, “Stop! Enough, already…”
Answered another way, indeed a small army of interested parties is watching in abject horror what is taking place in the
health care field. However, no one in the power seats of government, certainly no one in the White House, currently is giving
this national crisis a serious second look.
“It still has to get worse,” Dr. Timothy Johnson, the television doctor, recently told me. His sources say that following the
2008 presidential election, the flames of unrest should be burning high enough to finally dictate remedial action.
Meantime, William D. (Bill) Novelli, the media smart CEO of AARP, is speaking out on the matter. In the January issue of his
newspaper (AARP Bulletin), he writes: “One of the most important challenges facing our nation is fixing our broken health
care system.”
(Please see Lindeman’s column of Jan. 5, beginning: “Knowledgeable and informed people agree on two things about out health
care delivery system: 1) it is broken and sorely in need of rehabilitation. 2) This much-needed reform is not about to take
place anytime soon.”)
Novelli introduces Dr. Henry E. Simmons, president of the National Coalition on Health Care, quoting the physician as saying
the nation’s current problems are converging to create the so-called “perfect storm.”
The three critical contributors include: 1) ever-rising costs; 2) increasing numbers of Americans without adequate insurance;
3) a poor quality of health care delivery.
The aggressive Novelli, a welcome new player to the dialogue, concludes: “The system is beyond minor repair; we need
fundamental reform. And we need it soon.”
“Change will come,” conclude investigative reporters Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele, writing in “Critical Condition”
(Doubleday; 2004). The reasons: “The market system is a devastating failure, and nearly every major opinion poll finds health
care at or near the top of Americans’ concerns.”
Meantime, an estimated 18,000 citizens die every year because they lack any medical insurance, and so ignore problems or
address them too late. Odd, isn’t it, how our national compassion overflows for the Southeast Asian victims of a tsunami, yet
we persist in permitting 44 million of our citizens to gamble their lives without any health insurance?
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Outrageous Associations
