Hey Kinky Friedman Give Us a Hand:The Posse is Growing !

Dear Brad
Comments:

I would like to join your dad’s posse. Here is a letter I wrote to Kinky about healthcare. If your dad’s interested have him contact me. I’ve been researching healthcare on my own for the last 4 years.

Here’s the letter, they never responded to it.

Dear Kinky,

Please excuse my boldness, but I am writing this to help with your platform on healthcare.

I like the leave no teacher behind, bio-fuels and the I’ll sign anything but bad legislation; however that is not enough to get my vote and the thousands of Texans who are either un-insured or under-insured.

It is not just about covering the poor. I have found out how a middle-class person can quickly become poor without insurance or with inadequate insurance.

The Problem
First I want to make you aware of a few problems in healthcare costs:
The un-insured are charged at least 10 times the amount charged to insurance companies.
A blood test called CA125 cost me $198.50 when I was un-insured and only $22.50 when I got insurance. The $22.50 was before my deductible was met! I could give you more examples but you get the idea.
A person cannot get prices before purchasing healthcare services.
o I had to have major surgery after my health insurance was canceled. So like I do with any large purchase I tried to shop around and called different hospitals to get an approximate price. Impossible! I called 4 hospitals; one hung up on me thinking it was a prank call, two didn’t know what to tell me and would call me back, which they didn’t; and one called me back and told me $15,000 which of course was way above what an insurance company would pay.
A hospital official was quoted saying,” We have to charge the un-insured more to make up for the discounts we give health insurance companies.”
o Does this seem like common sense to you?
Doctors are not allowed to give a discount to the un-insured or under-insured.
If I could have paid the rates given to health insurance companies I wouldn’t have lost all my savings, I could have stayed in the middle-class.
Where does pricing come from?
o One ENT I saw charged over $2,200.00 for a Limited CT scan of the sinuses while another charged over $600.00. Since I had insurance at the time each cost me $210.00, again this is without my deductible met.
o So how much does a Limited CT Scan and other procedures really cost? What is a fair price?

The Solution (maybe not THE solution but an idea)

Allow the un-insured to pay the same fees for procedures given to the Federal Government under Medicare.
This would cost the taxpayers nothing. It would simply be a Medicare Discount Card.
Allow doctors to give the un-insured discounts
Price transparency-have doctors, dentists, labs, pharmacies state their prices up front.
At the very least make no interest loans or credit cards available for medical debts.

So in conclusion I have another campaign slogan for you:

Leave no Patient behind!

I would love to hear something back from your campaign or from whoever reads this.

Give me some healthcare hope and Ill give you my vote; and campaign my friends and family to vote for Kinky.