The Millennial: Sticker Shock

Before the provision in PPACA passed that allows grown children to stay on their parents plan until they are 26, she was on COBRA, where her mother paid $365 a month for 18 months before COBRA was exhausted. My girlfriend is finishing up two prerequisite courses before she plans on attending medical school and her employer does not offer coverage.

Now, it is obvious that the problem here is the extreme cost of the care itself. I’m sure that the hospital would say that the prices are meant to compensate for people with no insurance who use the ER as a primary care physician (the ER charges alone were $9,146.00). My girlfriend would have been one of those people, pushing the cost for everyone else up, was it not for PPACA.

The carriers are not to blame here. I am sure that Aetna was not happy to pay the $12,724. The problem is the cost. The CT scan charge alone was $3,814. What is it running on, liquid gold? I would love to see the itemized break-down of why it cost almost $10,000 just for my girlfriend to be prescribed some antibiotics. Had this happened at nine in the morning rather than nine at night it would have been handled by her primary care physician very easily, and for a fraction of the cost.

So, is there no solution to this outrageous pricing just as there is no solution to why the Mets are horrible? I don’t know which problem is more difficult to fix. What if the carriers took a page from Major League Baseball and entered into some type of collective bargaining with hospitals? I am not suggesting a strike similar to 1994 when droves of fans spent the summer watching minor league games. I am suggesting a cohesive and stern approach that lets hospitals know that these prices are unsustainable for the carriers and the patients. What about a medical loss ratio for hospitals that throttles the cost of medical care to a certain percentage over the cost to provide said care?

These are just ideas from an exhausted baseball fan in the middle of summer but these prices, they will continue to exhaust carriers and patients throughout the year and for years to come if a change does not take place.