Submitted by David H Dennis, Sep 29, 2007 17:06

When I had health insurance, a friend of mine said that a tingling sensation I had in my extremities might be serious. So he sent me over to the emergency room, and I spent about 24 hours there running through a bunch of tests to determine my problem. They found out I had adult onset diabetes, which is apparently not frightfully serious, at least not yet, and I left the hospital. The bill was over $8,000. Insurance reduced it to about $2,800. Now, I don't know about you, but being charged $2,800 a night to stay in a hospital, with nothing more significant than a $25 patch being used to actually improve my health, just doesn't seem worth the big bucks. I suppose when the same thing happens to some poor illegal alien, they put him in the hospital in the same way I was, and he doesn't have a big fat insurance company to go to bat for him, and so he gets an $8,000 bill, the hospital writes it off, and we get news stories like "Illegal aliens cost health system zillions of dollars a year." Frankly, I'd rather die than pay this kind of money for "health care" that's virtually worthless. Sure, a health care system is great if you need to have your heart replaced, but if that costs more money than you'll earn in two years or more, that's just plain not worth it. I'd rather die than wind up with such a crushing debt burden. I'd like to see a health system which generates bills I could afford to pay, on my own, without any Big Brother insurance company looking over my shoulder and inevitably increasing bureaucracy and costs. Isn't it interesting that laser eye surgery, a purely elective form of surgery that fixes your eyesight, has gone from $2,000 an eye to $1,000 an eye to less than $500 an eye. And the companies that do it are prospering, while our mainstream health system is going broke despite charging fees that nobody can reasonably afford. Why can't we use the same kind of setup for more critical health problems? I'm willing to pay for health care, just not thousands of dollars a night for purely nominal services - I will bet the actual amount of professional attention paid to me was less than two hours out of the night. Is professional attention plus a lousy bed in a room shared with another patient worth $1,000 per hour plus $800 for the room? It sure makes the Four Seasons Hotel look like a deal. D

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