Many have weighed in on Time Magazines recent 36-page article by Steven Brill, titled “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us” including his current employer, Yale University. The Yale Daily news reports –

Brill’s exposé — the longest ever printed in Time, clocking in at 24,105 words — decodes the difficult language of medical bills, revealing inflated charges that account for the lavish 11.7 percent average profit margin for nonprofit hospitals nationwide. Brill, the founder of The American Lawyer magazine and the Court TV network, writes of excessive hospital markups on products such as a single acetaminophen tablet, for which hospitals charge $1.50 per tablet, while 100 tablets cost $1.49 on Amazon. Such charges are mechanized through a chargemaster, a massive computer file that lists prices for thousands of products and services, which Brill argues should be eliminated in the interest of hospital budget transparency.

“Complete lack of transparency is dangerous when arguably the most important part of our economy deals with life and death itself,” Brill told the News.

Brill added that transparency would prevent hospitals from maintaining “completely unaccountable power” to commit rampant abuse. While he recognized that hospitals are not intrinsically villainous because of the public services they provide, he said he hoped that that the public would regard their billing practices and positions as important local charities with more skepticism.

“I have a friend who told me after reading the story that he was immediately quitting the hospital board,” Brill said. “It didn’t need the money.”

Brill has done the public a huge service by bringing this much needed sunlight to what is otherwise treated as a state secret and Time Magazine is to be applauded for dedicating 36 pages of last weeks magazine to fully tell the story. Below is a short snippet from the article.

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

By Steven Brill

1. Routine Care, Unforgettable Bills

When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanie’s father had been treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.

Because Stephanie and her husband had recently started their own small technology business, they were unable to buy comprehensive health insurance. For $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, they had been able to get only a policy that covered just $2,000 per day of any hospital costs. “We don’t take that kind of discount insurance,” said the woman at MD Anderson when Stephanie called to make an appointment for Sean. Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance. Stephanie got her mother to write her a check. “You do anything you can in a situation like that,” she says. The Recchis flew to Houston, leaving Stephanie’s mother to care for their two teenage children. About a week later, Stephanie had to ask her mother for $35,000 more so Sean could begin the treatment the doctors had decided was urgent. His condition had worsened rapidly since he had arrived in Houston. He was “sweating and shaking with chills and pains,” Stephanie recalls. “He had a large mass in his chest that was … growing. He was panicked.”

Nonetheless, Sean was held for about 90 minutes in a reception area, she says, because the hospital could not confirm that the check had cleared. Sean was allowed to see the doctor only after he advanced MD Anderson $7,500 from his credit card. The hospital says there was nothing unusual about how Sean was kept waiting. According to MD Anderson communications manager Julie Penne, “Asking for advance payment for services is a common, if unfortunate, situation that confronts hospitals all over the United States.”

The total cost, in advance, for Sean to get his treatment plan and initial doses of chemotherapy was $83,900.

Why?

The first of the 344 lines printed out across eight pages of his hospital bill — filled with indecipherable numerical codes and acronyms — seemed innocuous. But it set the tone for all that followed. It read, “1 ACETAMINOPHE TABS 325 MG.” The charge was only $1.50, but it was for a generic version of a Tylenol pill. You can buy 100 of them on Amazon for $1.49 even without a hospital’s purchasing power.

Click “Bitter Pill: Why medical bills are killing us” by Steven Brill