{"id":7323,"date":"2005-03-30T15:09:56","date_gmt":"2005-03-30T22:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/03\/30\/medicine-and-money.html"},"modified":"2005-03-30T15:09:56","modified_gmt":"2005-03-30T22:09:56","slug":"medicine_and_mo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/03\/30\/medicine_and_mo.html","title":{"rendered":"Medicine and money"},"content":{"rendered":"

A rambling but fascinating essay in the New Yorker<\/em> on the business side of being a doctor<\/a>. Great stuff (and no simple answers):<\/p>\n

I remember, nine years ago, getting the bill for the heart surgery that saved my son?s life. The total cost, it said, was almost a quarter-million dollars. My payment? Five dollars — the cost of the co-pay for the initial visit to the emergency room and the doctor who figured out that our pale and struggling boy was suffering from heart failure. I was an intern then, and in no position to pay for any significant part of his medical expenses. If my wife and I had had to, we would have bankrupted ourselves for him. But insurance meant that all anyone had to consider was his needs. It was a beautiful thing.<\/p>\n

Yet it’s also the source of what economists call “moral hazard”: with other people paying the bills, I did not care how much was spent or charged to save my child. To me, all the members of the team deserved a million dollars for what they did. Others were footing the bill — so it’s left to them to question the price. Hence the adversarial relationship doctors have with insurers. Whether insurance is provided by the government or by corporations, there is no reason to think that the battles — over the fees charged, the bills rejected, the pre-approval contortions — will ever end.<\/p>\n

(via Kottke<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rambling but fascinating essay in the New Yorker on the business side of being a doctor. Great stuff (and no simple answers): I remember, nine years ago, getting the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":44648,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/27\/the-american-business-of-justice.html","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":0},"title":"The American Business of Justice","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 27-Aug-14 10:41am","format":false,"excerpt":"It sounds like a win-win for everyone: turn over all sorts of judicial system tasks (probation, warrants, monitoring collars, fine collection, probation drug testing) to private companies. Presto! The taxpayer is off the hook, and the \"bad guys\" are getting their punishment.Except that more and more, that's turning into a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13513,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/11\/25\/pretty_soon_it_adds_up_to.html","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":1},"title":"Pretty soon it adds up to real money …","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 25-Nov-08 12:07pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The cost of the economic bail-out to date: If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. People have a hard time conceptualizing...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":33258,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/18\/cost-perspectives.html","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":2},"title":"Cost Perspectives","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 18-Apr-13 10:46am","format":false,"excerpt":"The next time someone's going on and on about austerity, about eliminating \"entitlements,\" about how we all need to make \"shared sacrifices,\" about how some study cost the taxpayers a million dollars, or how some space probe is a boondoggle, or how some program that cost a few hundred million\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5827,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/13\/sick_call.html","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":3},"title":"Sick call","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 13-Jul-04 11:36am","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the thorniest domestic issues I have is with health care. American health care is truly amazing -- for those who can afford it, are insured against its costs,...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":29086,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/04\/your-tax-dollars-at-work-according-to-larry-craig.html","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":4},"title":"Your Tax Dollars at Work (according to Larry Craig)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 4-Aug-12 4:16pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Bathroom expenses included, apparently.Reshared post from +Jim Feig Embedded Link Larry Craig now claiming bathroom bust was \u2018business trip\u2019 | The Raw Story A member of Craig's defense team, D.C. attorney Andrew Herman, wrote, \u201cNot only was the trip itself constitutionally required, but Senate rules sanction reimbursement for any cost\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2Frs%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F08%2FLarry-Craig-via-screen-cap-615x345.png","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2Frs%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F08%2FLarry-Craig-via-screen-cap-615x345.png 1x, https:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2Frs%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F08%2FLarry-Craig-via-screen-cap-615x345.png 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":133375,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/29\/winning-friends-and-influencing-people-thaad.html","url_meta":{"origin":7323,"position":5},"title":"Winning Friends and Influencing People (THAAD!)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 29-Apr-17 11:02am","format":false,"excerpt":"President Trump has made comments that South Korea (and Saudi Arabia) should be paying for American anti-missile protection (even though the weapons and the operations would still be done by American personnel).If the US has interests that are protected by such systems, then we should pay for putting them in.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}