Big Beautiful Dreamer
ridiculously contented
I live in North Carolina, whose legislature has made a lot of embarrassing moves lately.
This move, however, is making me very happy.
"A proposal to make hospital bills more transparent and easy to understand sprinted through a [state] Senate committee Wednesday with bipartisan support," according to the Charlotte Observer.
Public hospitals could no longer garnish a patient's wages, and no hospital or surgery center could put a lien on a patient's home.
Hospital bills would have to be clear and easy to understand. Medical terms and codes would have to be explained in large print.
One of the bill's sponsors reported being baffled by a bill for $26,000 for his son's three-hour outpatient surgery.
The bill also provides for hospitals and surgery centers to provide cost estimates for some of the most commonly performed procedures, with the understanding that those costs will vary widely depending on the individual's medical history.
I'm very pleased about all this.
What I'm most pleased about?
What prompted this bill to be proposed in the first place. It wasn't just the state legislator's bafflement over the bill for his son's surgery.
A year ago, the Charlotte Observer and The News and Observer of Raleigh collaborated on and published a series of stories "revealing nonprofit hospitals' high profits, huge markups on drugs, and tough stances against patients struggling to pay their bills. That led to [the legislator's] bill" and the interest of the state attorney general.
"Media" has become a very broad term encompassing a number of platforms.
Even limiting the term to "newspapers" includes garbage printed by disreputable publishers and more fit to be called "rags."
But I worked in newspaper journalism for 20 years -- I will always be a news hound -- and I have great pride in the general integrity of real newspapers, the craft of journalism, and the public service that real newspapers provide.
A link to the article about the hospital billing legislation is here:http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/04/25/4001932/senate-panel-approves-legislation.html
This move, however, is making me very happy.
"A proposal to make hospital bills more transparent and easy to understand sprinted through a [state] Senate committee Wednesday with bipartisan support," according to the Charlotte Observer.
Public hospitals could no longer garnish a patient's wages, and no hospital or surgery center could put a lien on a patient's home.
Hospital bills would have to be clear and easy to understand. Medical terms and codes would have to be explained in large print.
One of the bill's sponsors reported being baffled by a bill for $26,000 for his son's three-hour outpatient surgery.
The bill also provides for hospitals and surgery centers to provide cost estimates for some of the most commonly performed procedures, with the understanding that those costs will vary widely depending on the individual's medical history.
I'm very pleased about all this.
What I'm most pleased about?
What prompted this bill to be proposed in the first place. It wasn't just the state legislator's bafflement over the bill for his son's surgery.
A year ago, the Charlotte Observer and The News and Observer of Raleigh collaborated on and published a series of stories "revealing nonprofit hospitals' high profits, huge markups on drugs, and tough stances against patients struggling to pay their bills. That led to [the legislator's] bill" and the interest of the state attorney general.
"Media" has become a very broad term encompassing a number of platforms.
Even limiting the term to "newspapers" includes garbage printed by disreputable publishers and more fit to be called "rags."
But I worked in newspaper journalism for 20 years -- I will always be a news hound -- and I have great pride in the general integrity of real newspapers, the craft of journalism, and the public service that real newspapers provide.
A link to the article about the hospital billing legislation is here:http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/04/25/4001932/senate-panel-approves-legislation.html
