Sick of Hospital Bills
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Helped by two whistle-blowers, the lawyer who beat Big Tobacco is on a new crusade -- to fight what clinics charge the uninsured
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BY LAW, hospitals provide free emergency care for illegal immigrants. But the costs are bruising, and pending federal regulations could scare away patients.
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Shrinking budgets and escalating costs this year exacerbated many of the county&#39;s health- care problems, which included the first human case of West Nile virus and the fact that prescription medications are increasingly expensive for many seniors.
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First it was St. Paul&#39;s on Burrard St., which had to start closing wards last week due to the illness. And now it&#39;s struck the BC Children&#39;s Hospital.
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Although special financing plans for health care carry risks, using regular credit cards to pay medical bills may be even more dangerous to household finances.
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Get the real scoop on your medical bills before you leave your doctor's office.
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I hope the Republicans come prepared to debate health care this year, and they leave the platitudes and slogans home.  Enough of us have been seriously sick, or know someone who has, or have family members who have been or are now. The way the Republicans describe health care, it's as if they've never been through it or don't know anyone who has. I got some pushback, not much, from a casual mention of universal health care a few days ago. Some think the problem can be solved through the "private sector" but that's nonsense. There is no such thing in health care. It's not a free market, as anyone who's been through it can tell you. There's nothing free about it. (Free as in freedom, not as in free beer.) When you check into a hospital you turn over your whole being to the health care system. I can't imagine anything changing that, nor do I think it should. When you're dangerously ill, decisions must be made about you. To people who have never relinquished control, it's a big trip, because that's what you have to do. You spend huge amounts of time waiting. You can't sleep because hospitals are 24-by-7. You're much more likely to get an infection in a hospital, and infection on top of other disease can kill. Even so, people are treated and some even are cured by the system. Lives are definitely prolonged, pain is eased.  Whether we have universal health care or not, it won't change the basics of how health care works, and how unfair it is to be sick and fighting for your life. But there are some things we can change, and if you have a heart, and think about it, I don't see how anyone could be against universal health care and still sleep at night. One commenter said that no one is ever turned away from an emergency room, as if that's all there was to health care.  First, emergency rooms do turn people away, and some of them die. But most disease is not treated in emergency rooms. If you need drugs to treat cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, AIDS, heart disease, depression, arthritis, emphysema, to name a few common chronic diseases -- you're out of luck if you don't have insurance. You could die years before you would with treatment, or might suffer, where if you had good insurance, you wouldn't.  I'm lucky I have good health insurance. It's lucky that I lived in Massachusetts when my COBRA policy expired, it's the one state in the US that has liberalized health insurance. I'm lucky that I can afford the monthly payments. I'm lucky. But why should getting the care and treatment you need depend on luck? We can do so much better. And I think our country would do better with a healthy population that knows if they, or someone they love, got sick they'll the help they need. It'll be interesting to see if we can get McCain to talk about this, if he turns out to be the Republcan nominee. The Republicans have never been responslble about this issue. It's of huge importance to Americans, and McCain presents himself as an honest person. He must understand how the health care system actually works. He's been through it himself, probably many times.  BTW, Hillary's passion for computerizing medical records is a good thing. She's right, a lot of money could be saved, the system could be made much more efficient, people would get better treatment, and lives would be saved. The sooner we get busy doing this, the better it will be for all of us.
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About half of adults in middle-income families reported serious problems in paying for their health care while even those in more affluent circumstances said they had troubles with medical bills, a new survey found.
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New research published in the current issue of the American Journal of Medicine found just shows that new bills donât work... Hall reviewed managed care patient protection laws in the 48 states that have
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Imagine the reaction if Prime Minister Paul Martin stood up and said the federal government no longer wants to pay for hospital costs, or for doctors&#39; services.
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Patients are not receiving the best care they could be because of the 48-hour GP access target.
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Cell phone customers are increasingly complaining--and suing--over mysterious, hard-to-cancel charges on their monthly bills.
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Patients may not be given a choice of hospitals by the end of the year as ministers promised, a report says.
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A hospital group is trying a radically new method to avoid costly mistakes, charging a flat fee that includes follow-up care.
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It's a new way to push for patient safety: Don't pay hospitals when they commit certain errors. Medicare will start hitting hospitals where it hurts in October, and other insurers are hot on the trail.
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The kidney dialysis unit of the public hospital in Nablus is running at capacity: four shifts a day serving nearly 100 patients. It would be a difficult task for any hospital. More so for one that has no money to pay its staff or buy fresh medical supplies.
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The number of patients who use hospital A&E departments when they do not need to is reviewed.