Letters: Paying for healthcare

Re “A costly pain in the neck,” Out Here, Feb. 21

Critiques of American healthcare often focus on the high prices of itemized charges in a hospital bill.

We all know that the cost of a hamburger in a restaurant far exceeds the cost of what one would pay for the meat and bun and other ingredients in a supermarket, but even an astute observer like Jon Healey — who was in a car accident and must wear a pricey neck brace that doctors selected for him — may overlook this when paying out of his own pocket. This is not even to mention the need to cover nonreimbursed charges.

I don’t know the specific payment arrangements involved here, but I suspect that3 if the neck brace were to cost less, something else would need to cost more. This kind of payment system hardly supports cost-effectiveness.

Tweaking fee-for-service will not solve healthcare cost problems. Fee-for-service is itself the problem.

Hyman J. Milstein, MD

Studio City

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