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Sure
hospital bills are notorious for being expensive, but one New York man
learned that he racked up an unusually high bill for a doctor's visit:
The hospital cured his pneumonia, but the bill — for an eye-popping $44 million — made him sick.
Unemployed doorman Alexis Rodriguez couldn’t believe his eyes when he opened an envelope from Bronx-Lebanon Hospital last week and saw what he appeared to owe.
“I almost had an asthma attack,” said Rodriguez, 28, just one of several hundred patients to receive absurdly inflated bills because of a “system error.”
His amount due was $44,776,587 for outpatient services that in reality amounted to no more than $300.
From The New York Daily News: Link (Photo: James Keivom/NY Daily News)
The da Vinci surgical robot, a $1.4 million robot can perform heart surgeries, remove cancers, and do so with minimally invasive procedures. For example, in order to operate on prostate cancer, the da Vinci avoids cutting the abdomen, therefore causing less blood loss, faster recovery, and minimal scars. Though there are initial problems with its use, it seems reasonable that one day, medical care will all be robotized.
The da Vinci has been billed as a breakthrough in the quest to make surgery less invasive. With its four remote-controlled arms and sophisticated camera, it enables surgeons to operate through small incisions with greater precision and visibility.
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The next time you eat in a restaurant in San Francisco, take a closer look at the bill. You may see a new line item there, a "health" fee to cover employees’ healthcare.
Travel writer Ed Perkins of Chicago Tribune wasn’t amused:
The rationale for this one is to cover the employers’ mandatory contribution to the City’s "Healthy San Francisco" health-coverage system. The charge actually is levied on employers, but at least some restaurants are adding a few dollars or percentage points to each customer’s bill to cover this charge.
The restaurants’ excuse for assessing this charge separately is to let customers know how much they’re paying for employees’ health coverage. That’s the same excuse hotels use when they add "resort" or "housekeeping" fees to unsuspecting guests’ room bills. It’s the same excuse airlines would use to exclude fuel surcharges from their advertised fares if the Department of Transportation would allow them. And it’s sheer nonsense. Employees’ health insurance is no less of a cost of doing business than rent, property taxes, food costs, security services and all the other inputs businesses require to operate. To single out health care for a separate surcharge is unwarranted.
British physician Harold Shipman may have killed as many as 400 of his patients during his medical career, which would make him the most prolific serial killer of all time. An official audit estimates the number of victims at 236 over 24 years, but the exact number will probably never be known.
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