By John Burtis
Friday, January 26, 2007
The current flurry of excitement over the President's latest go at changing American health care, got me to thinking about the real costs of medical intervention.
Until January, 1973, I was a pretty healthy guy. I had played football and wrestled, lettered in both, and I was remarkably free of the injuries associated with these two tough sports. But on the 22nd of that long ago month, I was nearly killed in a job related accident.
That particular Monday was a day when Carly Simon was number one on the pop charts, LBJ passed away, Bob Griese appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and Geritol was fined $812,000 for deceptive advertising. It was also the day that I nearly lost my life.
After an automobile nearly ran me over in an alley, I radioed for another cop to stop the vehicle in question, after it turned right on Wilshire Boulevard from Alley 3.
After the car was stopped, and following my brisk walk to the police car which had stopped the woman in question, I leaned in her window to issue her a ticket before arresting her for the warrants which had popped up during the course of a wants and warrants check.
For a few brief seconds, contrary to all of my police training, my mind wandered. And I suddenly realized that the driver had raised the auto's power window, which grabbed me in a vise like grip at my right armpit, and was accelerating forward on a busy Monday shopping night, into busy Wilshire Boulevard.
We sped through red lights on the wrong side of the road, and I watched as oncoming cars veered out of the way with their horns Dopplering out behind me.
As we sped along, with my body now almost horizontal along the driver's side of the station wagon, I leaned over and hollered to the driver, asking her where we were going. She replied, "We're going home."
Yowza, I remembered thinking, her current address is 23 blocks away, and I've got to get off, just before I finally yanked my arm free, and fell to the pavement bareheaded at 55 mph, as clocked by the cop who was chasing us. I awoke that Thursday in intensive care, having suffered a fracture of my C-5 vertebra, brain damage, aphasia, a severe concussion, nerve damage to my right arm, and a multitude of cuts, abrasions, and contusions, and my life has never been the same. I was the living embodiment of Impact, the television show.
Needless to say, my stay at the hospital was expensive. And when I received the first of a series of bills I noted with some surprise that my stay in intensive care had cost some $1,600 a day. Overall, my hospital stay had cost almost $30,000 in 1973 dollars, or about $175,000 or so, and possibly more, in today's dollars, when you consider the 8-10% per year that medical costs have grown.
On my first day back at work, I was run over by another auto, and I was returned to intensive care, and another few days in the hospital. Over the years I have lost both the paperwork and my recollections of that cost, but it was, no doubt, proportionally as expensive as my previous stay.
I retired due to injuries sustained in the line of duty on November 1, 1974, and from then on, my health coverage has been covered by either my employment or from my own wallet.
In December of 2003, I had my right shoulder replaced, and that episode cost over 100,000 dollars, and I was shocked when I received that final bill as well.
These are just a few of the hospitalizations I have endured. Since 1974, I have had two sinus surgeries, my cervical vertebrae fused, hernia surgery, a bone tumor removed from my left foot and the insertion of cadaver bones, and two other shoulder surgeries, in addition to the replacement. And I will undergo my fourth shoulder surgery at the end of this month. The total real cost for all of these procedures is astronomical.
I have been lucky, indeed, to survive and to be able, either with sufficient cash or with employer plans, to afford these large, invasive, and involved procedures, and to have a choice of facilities and physicians in their repair.
My point is simply this -- how often do we check our medical bills to see what the real, bottom line, cost of our medical services amounts to when we receive our bills. Sure, we always check the box which is marked "patient to pay," but little else on the many sheets of official looking numbers, tests, medications, and associated costs.
President Bush has just floated a proposal to assist those choosing to pay their own way by writing off their yearly costs, in exchange for a tax on the amount of premiums paid over a $15,000 per year limit, for those with employer plans.
Regardless of whether you support the Democrats and their calls for an invasive governmental system designed to cover you from cradle to grave, or the less onerous and expensive Bush idea, take a look at your total bill. Then ask yourself if you could afford the procedures if it was on your dime, and if those medical interventions were critical and necessary for your actual well being and survival, and if could you live without them.
Luckily, I'm not plagued with many ongoing medical issues, just the vagaries encountered when the chassis begins to fail after a few million miles of rough road. But think of the costs for all of us if Hillary care, or Edwards care, or Schwarzenegger care, or Democratic care, come to pass nationally, and then extrapolate my costs nationwide and then add the g-men needed to process the whole affair after adding a healthy dash of illegal aliens.
Luckily, as a result of some vestige of a free market system, I can still get a marvelous surgeon and a date for surgery of my choosing at Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the world's finest medical institutions. But imagine a system where your treatment, your hospital, and your doctor were assigned by the government and your surgeries are scheduled years in advance. And despite the hype about Cuba's superior care, look at the problems poor old Fidel has experienced as the result of a botched up caper from a national health system he personally controls.
Whoa, let's keep every part of the free market remaining in health care that we can. Personal choice is a marvelous thing, even when you're unconscious.
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