Name:   architect - Subject:   Simply Unsustainable Date:   8/24/2018 11:39:14 PM (updated 8/24/2018 11:44:53 PM)

It is scary that in this case Wix is partially right...cost shifting is SOP for hospitals today in colusion with the insurance companies, but it did not start with Obamacare.  It was going on when Obama was just a boy in ''Kenya''!

Mr H perhaps a little free interprise might help.  About a year ago my wife had a fall resulting in a torn rotator cuff.  Her Orthopedist at a large local clinic associated with a hospital ordered an MRI. He recommended the hospital but told her she could also select another provider if she desired.  The hospital MRI unit, which was miles away from the clinic, had a backlog of several days and the cost estimate was $2300.  There would be no out of pocket because Medicare and her supplemental would pay even though their payment, like yours, would be only pennies on the dollar.  Almost directly across from the orthopedic clinc was a private MRI facility that could take her the next morning with a cost of less than $400 which was also covered by insurance. 

Every major hospital thinks they must have every new high tech piece of diagnostic equipment that comes down the pike along with the increased overhead expense that comes with it because all the other big competing medical facilities have it...the reality is that in most cases they don't.