George’s $450,000 Heart Attack: Second Opinions on Hospital Bill

Re the commentary piece “Patient Is Back From the Dead, but Health System Is Very Sick” by David Langness, (Jan. 27): While I sympathize with the plight of George and Laura, as recounted in David Langness’ commentary, I don’t believe the true message here is that the Indigent Medical Services program fails many needy people and shorts California’s hospitals.

What Langness leaves out of the story of George’s $450,000 heart attack is whether or not George and Laura had any health insurance, and if not, why not. Why no COBRA coverage from their previous jobs in San Antonio? Why didn’t this “middle-aged and middle-class” couple buy individual coverage during the period they were between jobs?

Such coverage wouldn’t have come cheap, but it would cost far less than $450,000, prevented the couple from becoming “medically indigent” and allowed Western Med to collect its due.

In our haste to blame faceless government programs for the losses that hospitals suffer treating the uninsured, we overlook that simple, yet critical, virtue--individual responsibility--that preserves the solvency of far more than just our health-care system.

MAUREEN O’HAREN, Irvine