Johnson: Who's to blame for outrageous ER bill?

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 11, 2006 at midnight

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I know I should get it over with and just blame the illegals. It is exactly what dozens of folks will write and telephone to say.

Yet I like to think I'm not that simple or quite so knuckleheaded.

It started Christmas Eve. It was about 11:30 p.m. when I bolted upright in bed, my belly feeling as though someone had dumped hot coals in it.

I couldn't tell my wife what was wrong because I had fled to the bathroom to throw up. I didn't make it.

Five minutes later, I was still doing the same thing. Only now, blood was coming up.

There is nothing sadder than spending Christmas morning in the hospital. You feel like you are somehow putting the staff out. At least until you figure out they were going to be there whether you were or not.

The best thing is you get right in. Few, it seems, get sick enough on Christmas Eve to need the ER. I had an IV in my arm and three nurses popping my hood less than five minutes after I walked in.

I really felt bad for the doctor, who they had to page, and who walked in shortly before 6 a.m. on Christmas morning.

He shoved a tiny camera on a long cable down my throat to see what was going on. He at least had the decency to knock me out before he did it.

They let me out well before noon. Turns out I have two small ulcers in my stomach. One started bleeding shortly after I went to sleep on Christmas Eve.

They gave me four pills and sent me home.

The bill for all of it arrived the other day.

I nearly fell over from a heart attack.

The entire less-than-eight- hour exercise, it turned out, cost exactly $14,500.54. The 54 cents, when I got off the floor, actually made me laugh.

I am, you see, a very, very lucky man. I have health insurance.

The silliness they outlined in the bill is what they will send to my insurer. I am certain the folks there in billing will at least get a good laugh at the cost of the four pills they gave me: $1,169.15. If not, I need to become a Prevacid pusher.

The semi-private room I wasn't in long enough to remember cost $2,374. The boys in the lab had a nice Christmas: $2,949.40. And it appears they used $1,849.61 worth of supplies on me.

Here's the thing, though: Suppose I didn't have insurance.

Without it, I would for certain be bankrupt. And thanks to last year's Congress, not even the courts could now keep me from losing my home, car and, well, everything else simply because I became ill.

It is such outrageous billing that has pushed the nation's cost for treating its estimated 46 million uninsured citizens to nearly $2 trillion in 2004, according to a report released Monday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

That is, it said, about $6,280 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

"Medical spending continues to rise faster than wages and faster than economic growth, and workers are paying much more in health care premiums than just a few years ago," the team of government economists reported.

All of which begs a couple of questions.

What will happen to us baby boomers, when we have finally dropped our pens, our computers or our shovels and other tools, and are no longer covered? Perhaps, even, because our pension funds were allowed to fail and go away?

Congress only last month badly slashed the amount of money it is willing to pay for Medicare and Medicaid, which it explained away as an effort to balance the budget. Is it OK to either laugh or cry about this right now?

And what will the quality of care be for the poorest of us baby boomers, even if that care is funded by a sum similar to this year's $2 trillion, if you can even fathom such a sum.

I will bet a dollar to a doughnut that I would have never received the level of services the hospital provided had I not first plopped down my insurance card.

Would they have even bothered to page the doctor?

What do you think?

What we do know is if you are a minority in that 46 million-or-so number, the chances of getting quality medical care for illnesses such as diabetes, mental illness and tuberculosis are rapidly fading.

A separate government study also released Monday concluded the gap between Hispanics and whites in receiving quality medical care is growing ever wider. Measuring 40 types of disparities in health care quality between whites and Hispanics, the government found 41 percent were becoming smaller, while 59 percent were growing.

The gap for blacks, Asians and American Indians were narrowing, it said, but remain similarly large.

Getting charged nearly $15,000 for not even a day at the hospital simply fries me. That doctor can now kiss my back pocket.

Still and all, how satisfying it would be right now if I could point my finger, curse at and otherwise vent my anger at someone, some group, for driving up my hospital bill.

I know there are considerable numbers of people in the country illegally who get sick like I did. But they do not number - even on their best day - 46 million people.

Indeed, Dr. Elena Rios, president and chief executive of the National Hispanic Medical Association, estimates two of five Hispanics in this country do not have health insurance. And that group, she said, includes both legal and illegal immigrants.

Sadly, the bottom-line difference between them and me is, they would have stayed home, hugging the toilet bowl, and maybe bleeding to death.

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-892-2763 or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.

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