Sunday, January 19, 2014

Patients’ Costs Skyrocket


Doctors’ charges — and the incentives they reflect — are a major factor in the nation’s $2.7 trillion medical bill.

Kim Little had not thought much about the tiny white spot on the side of her cheek until a physician’s assistant at her dermatologist’s office warned that it might be cancerous.

Patients’ Costs Skyrocket

He took a biopsy, returning 15 minutes later to confirm the diagnosis and schedule her for an outpatient procedure at the Arkansas Skin Cancer Center in Little Rock, 30 miles away.

That was the prelude to a daylong medical odyssey several weeks later, through different private offices on the manicured campus at the Baptist Health Medical Center that involved a dermatologist, an anesthesiologist and an ophthalmologist who practices plastic surgery.

It generated bills of more than $25,000.

Do you think this is ridiculous?

Read the article in the New York Times


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