Hospital "Fraud"

I am still trying to digest Time magazine's issue ( the third week of February) devoted to the question of hospitals' profit system.

Many of us have joked about about a single Tylenol costing $5.00, when we have looked over a hospital bill. This small amount of money in the larger scheme of the care we receive is a small thing - compared to our gratitude of receiving treatment by caring health professionals.

And we have all heard stories of people driven into bankruptcy because of huge bills due to hospitalization and treatment. But those are other people with anonymous faces. We offer up our sympathies for their plight and then move on with our lives, hoping we do not get caught in the same circumstances someday.

Find a copy of this issue of Time magazine - on a newsstand or from the library. At 24,000+ words and filled with facts and data, it is slow reading. Frightening reading. It highlights not marginal hospitals somewhere but some of the big and most respected systems in our country - the places you might hope to be fortunate enough to receive treatment - if you are seriously ill.

My husband once buried a 103 year-old woman, who was healthy until the last three weeks of her life. She used to do things like call the library for a book and be told there was a long waiting list. She'd say "I'm 100 [or whatever her current age] and put me at the top of the list because I don't know how I long I have left." And they would.

We might hope to be like her - never need major medical treatment, nothing beyond a occasional cold or minor flu. But the reality is that this system "survives" based on the need for high profits - and it is likely to be a place we will need to turn at different points in our life.