MarkR

Hospitals to Underinsured: Pay Upfront

This write-up, as well as the WSJ article, are two of the most misinformed opinion pieces that I have ever read. They are opinion pieces, because there is nothing journalistic about gathering one side of stories and publishing it as a legitimate article. A better word for this would be propaganda.

First, the article asserts blame for the hospitals for requiring payments up front. After they make it sound like patients waiting on an organ are lined up outside the doors of the hospital, they also make it sound like nurses are refusing to finalize treatment until proof of payment is shown. Not only would that be illegal for a nurse to do (not to mention grossly unethical and against everything they're taught), I find it hard to believe that a nurse at perhaps the most respected cancer treatment facility in the world is refusing to give a patient life-saving care because the business office hasn't signed off on the treatment yet. Let's be clear about thing: doctors and nurses do not wait on the billing personnel to tell them it's ok to provide life-saving care to patients.

More importantly, however, is the blame this article asserts against hospitals, when they are not blame. These hospitals, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, operate in a system whereby they must compete to stay alive. This isn't like the UK where healthcare providers receive funding directly from the government (except for the VA). Doctors/hospitals must be paid for their services, the same way any businessperson must be paid for their products/services, or they will go out of business. Mr. Steinberg conveniently left out the part of the article where it talks about the millions of dollars MD Anderson has lost from patients being unable to pay. As someone that works in healthcare, I can tell you that the billions of dollars a year are lost because patients cannot pay for their care; however, they still receive the care they need.

This article, and the misinformed viewpoints of Mr Steinberg are extremely off-target. I suggest you do more research and deeper thinking before blindly commenting on a topic that you do not understand.