Hapless Healthcare System

Malpractice-avoiding defensive medicine and government and third party insurance payer schemes allow prices to rise, so cost containment is unnecessary. The healthcare industry, like the government seems to find ways to make what they do wildly expensive. A Tale of two treatments:
1. My adult daughter had a scooter accident and was taken involuntarily to the “regional trauma center”, Grady Hospital, infamous for being a place you don’t want to check into. We all took turns staying with her because Grady is a “do it yourself hospital”. No less than 20 “doctors” billed her insurance. They kept her for 2 weeks and wanted to do a tracheotomy despite the fact she was breathing on her own. She pulled out her tubes to announce her desire to escape. They released her. We found out later they botched the post-op treatment. Her incision infected and stayed that way. A year later she had another operation at a real hospital with a real surgeon to repair a huge hernia caused by the infection. The repair included sewing in a $20,000 piece of lab-grown skin. I’ve been told, this kind of Post-op problem is routine.

2. My son-in-law’s father developed no feeling on one side of his face. When he smiled, he looked like Dick Chaney. His doctor put him through $20.000 worth of tests and MRIs to determine that it wasn’t a stroke. He then had this guy to hold a mouthful of salt water in his mouth and asked if could taste the salt. When he said no, the doctor diagnosed him with bell’s palsy. In the old days the doctor would have done the salt water test first.