‘Medical Costs: Out of Sight’

I would like to comment on your editorial “Medical Costs: Out of Sight” (Dec. 1) concerning the high cost of medical care.

Recently, a friend of mine who had never been sick in his life, was stricken with a painful attack of diverticulitis. He had to be confined to a hospital bed for 36 hours while being treated with antibiotics.

I picked him up when he checked out of the hospital and drove him to his home. Oddly, his greatest concern was not about the frightening attack from which he had just recovered, but about the cost of his hospitalization. Since neither of us had ever been hospitalized before, we had no idea how much his stay in a semi-private room would cost. My first guess was $1,000, but then quickly changed it to $1,500. He didn’t even want to guess. The actual bill exceeded $5,000. The printout ran to more than four pages.

My friend’s employment background was such that he was able to recognize and evaluate for himself some of the charges on the printout. He knew from his own experience that they were exceedingly excessive. This prompted him to call the hospital nearly every day for about a month before the administrator consented to speak to him about these specific charges. Surprisingly, the administrator did not deny that the charges were excessive. Instead, he defended them on the grounds that his hospital was losing money on the Medicare patients that it had to treat. Thus, he claimed, he had no choice, but to make up the loss by “sticking it” to those who had the means to pay!

I think it is time for us to face up to the fact that the health-care industry in this country suffers from the same incompetency that afflicts the procurement agencies of the Defense Department. Both treat the money they take in and spend as if it were stage money. If the cost of the items they procure happens to be excessive, they shrug it off because the well from which they draw their money is almost guaranteed to never run dry.

WILLIAM A. SNELL

Van Nuys