American Heart Still is Broken
We seek hospitals as a solution to our medical problems when our health is going down the drain. Our bodies do not execute data as well as we want when high fever or pain are present. Sometimes we try to solve those problems with time. We think that they came on their own, and that they will go away on their own. As the problems get worse we call 911 for help, especially if you live by yourself, without thinking on the results.
Let’s take a closer view at those results that we unconsciously make. When a person call Emergency Medical Services known as 911, they will send The Fire Engine, The Fire Ladder, and The Paramedic. Let’s face the facts that we provide specific information to the 911 operator so they should send the right equipment, but they always send more than what is need. On September, 17 2015 my wife was transported three miles by the Paramedics to the hospital. When we got the bill on the mail, we said “what a rip off”. Riding an ambulance is more expensive than riding a limousine. We are talking that Emergency Medical services charge $503.00 per mile which is quite expensive to afford for the middle class and working class families. $1509.00 is almost what many families made a month after tax. Karl Marx explains that “To the owner of a commodity, every other commodity is, in regard to his own, a particular equivalent”. By comparing our commodity, which is human labor, to the Emergency Medical Services, which is transportation, we see this big gap is value. Due this this tremendous difference in commodity values, we feel rip off by a broken service which supposed to help everyone.
As if being rip off by Emergency transportation is not enough, hospitals always want a piece of the pie or the whole pie for themselves. When we arrive at the hospital, the first thing they ask is for medical insurance. Hospitals want to make sure that they are going to get paid first before they provide the medical service. After the check in process is done, which takes around 20 minutes, they send you to the waiting room where you spend from 1 to 6 hours with fever or pain. Once the nurses and the doctors find your problem, they will send you home with a prescription, or put you under supervise treatment in the hospital which might require a surgery. By spending three day in the hospital with surgery, some hospital will charge around $57,000 .00, yet these is not the final charge that they will make. By using external service like anesthesiology, those service will send you their bill apart from that of the hospital. The amount for such bills are in the range of $ 1000.00 to $2500.00. Spending one night at the hospital is almost $20,000.00. Hospital care is more expensive than sleeping one night at the Burj Al arab hotel in Dubai which charge $1300.00 to $2400.00 per night.
Karl Marx admits that “money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and thus by practice converted into commodities”. The hospital provide their service which is their commodity. We use insurance services in order to pay around 80% of the hospital commodities. Our insurance services charge us a percentage of our commodity that is labor. The 20% left of the hospital commodities must be paid by our labor commodity. As if the nightmare is not enough already, some insurance company cancel your coverage once you stop working because you are not fully recover, or you have a terminal disease. Let’s face it that we cannot pay $57,000.00 for medical service. This will cost the working family around two years of labor without paying any other bill just to cover the medical commodity.
Insurance companies are business which needs to make money in order to stay in business, so if they are not making money out of you, they will not provide their service. The federal law which force you to have medical insurance known as Obama Care is only looking after the interest of the rich and not the masses. The federal government call it reformed to the medical system, but it is actually a reform to take more money away from you without you notice.
Hospitals and all of their circle of service needs to cut down their prices, so we do not end up with a debt that is impossible to pay. This is the whole reason that American Heart Still is Broken.
