Sunday, September 21, 2014

Surprise $117K bill from unknown doctor



Whenever I write about medical costs here the logs inevitably suggest that there are not many people interested. I am worried about where healthcare cost will end up give that we already know it is outpacing inflation and probably wage rise. Will we end up no far from America? In the NYT story, doctors were incredibly rapacious. Would ours be different?

Han Fook Kwang wrote this earlier on the 14th of this month. He was studying and responding to a letter to the Forum by a doctor criticizing the growing greed of doctors. Such doctors now serve as a restrain on their overly money minded colleagues but can we expect that there will always be enough such doctors? I don't know.

The problem with healthcare cost now and the near future is that basically there is no problem. That's why people are so blasé. They will worry and complain when it is too late. Meanwhile doctors keep asking for more money and never pay attention to reaching the ceiling of unaffordability. It is critical that we cap the rate of medical inflation. To continue to allow it to grow faster than wages is a sure road to misery. Universal medical insurance will only serve to quicken our journey there because the silly patient often fail to connect the dots that ultimately this will come back to him as higher premiums and much richer doctors.


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