The Most Important Thing I didn’t learn in Med School
By Jessica Jou Mrs. B was washing dishes in the kitchen when she heard a thump where her twelve-month-old son was asleep. She ran to him and found her son had fallen from a chair (code: e884.2). He was crying (code: 780.92) and visibly shaken, but did not have overt signs of bleeding, bruising, or trauma. She picked him up and immediately brought him to the emergency room. There, he was triaged by the nurse (nursing report #1) and vitals were taken (nursing report #2). Shortly after the mother and son pair settled into the pediatric emergency room, he vomited once (code 787.03). The emergency...
Read MoreThe Cost of Apples
The following anecdote is by Samuel Yang, a patient from Maryland. Up until last May, my experience of medical costs was limited to the $100 per month premium I contributed towards my employer-sponsored insurance and the nominal co-pays associated with well-child checkups and generic prescriptions. There was never any hesitation in seeing a doctor or filling a prescription. That all changed when went I back to school. I blindly signed up for the school-recommended family insurance and naïvely assumed myself, my wife, and my two young children would receive whatever health care we needed at...
Read MoreDebating Price Transparency
Ever wonder how prices are set for healthcare services? If you’ve ever received a medical bill and wondered why it can’t be simpler to understand, then you’re asking the right question. While there are many reasons why healthcare costs are spiraling, one of them is that nobody really knows what anything costs. Providers get paid through a multiplicity of insurance-company contracts and billing schedules that change from patient to patient, depending on the type of health plan. Recently a New York Times article covered the issue of ‘balance billing’. A situation...
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