By Kristy Volmert | Staff Writer
If you’ve ever had a desperate visit to the emergency room and looked through your itemized bill, you know exactly what I’m talking about — you do a double-take. You take off your glasses so you can see better. Is that another zero right there?
Now, of course, healthcare is not going to be free. We can’t expect health insurance to cover everything, we can’t demand free prescription medications and we can’t ask for surgical operations to go on sale. After all, healthcare professionals work very hard and deserve just compensation. This is especially true given they are in such high demand. Many hospitals and care units across the country are understaffed. But even the simplest tests, treatments and items are off the charts expensive for patients. Patients are being charged much more than they should be.
A 2018 Vox article reveals findings after looking over 1,182 emergency room bills. The conclusions suggest that it is the facility fees that account for such excessive costs rather than professional fees. These two types of expenses make up the costs of medical visits, professional fees for any service provided by clinical staff and facility fees for services that require the use of a hospital facility’s assets (imaging, testing or overnight stays).
Sarah Kliff, senior correspondent at Vox, highlights the cases where patients were charged unnecessarily high costs for products that they could find for less than half the price at a local drugstore.
“The bills in our database include a $236 pregnancy test delivered in Texas, a $147 pregnancy test in Illinois and a $111 test in California. The highest price I saw? A $465 pregnancy test at a Georgia emergency room. For that amount, you could buy 84 First Response tests on Amazon,” Kliff said.
In December 2022, The Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker reported that ER visits exceed affordability thresholds for many consumers, even those with private insurance. If you access this report, you will see a series of statistics showing that the costs of ER visits, especially in Texas, New York, California and Florida are much higher than you’d expect.
A March 2024 report from the KFF also reported the severity Americans are having with healthcare costs. It reaffirms the claims that high healthcare costs prevent many people from receiving necessary care.
“One in four adults say that in the past 12 months they have skipped or postponed getting the healthcare they needed because of the cost. Notably six in ten uninsured adults (61%) say they went without needed care because of the cost.”
The report also addressed issues of unexpected bills and accumulating debt: “About three in four adults say they are either “very” or “somewhat worried” about being able to afford unexpected medical bills (74%) or the cost of health care services (73%) for themselves and their families. Additionally, about half of adults would be unable to pay an unexpected medical bill of $500 in full without going into debt.”
Every citizen of the United States deserves access to healthcare. I don’t see any reason why it should be so debilitating for patients to receive the care they need. I’m aware that maintenance and up-keeping of medical facilities can be very costly at times, but these financial burdens should never be thrown onto the patients who are already in a vulnerable position.
