Danny Sainovich – 5/30/05

This page was last updated on May 30, 2005.

Ouch!; Danny Sainovich; Beaver County Times; May 30, 2005.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“I had the unfortunate accident of stepping on a nail on a Saturday afternoon. As a result, I went to the Medical Center, Beaver, in Brighton Township to get a tetanus shot.

“Being overly generous, I would estimate the paperwork, the shot, and the bill took one hour. If I was getting the tetanus shot during office hours at my doctor’s office, it would have cost $16.”

[RWC] I don’t who Mr. Sainovich’s doctor is, but I have a hard time believing you can get in and out of any doctor’s office for a tetanus shot for $16 unless it’s only your insurance co-payment.

“The Medical Center charged $273.25.

“P.S. I like the way the billing statement reads: emergency room $223, pharmacy $51.25. I really hadn’t planned on investing in a pharmacy.”

[RWC] Before I begin, let’s do a historical price check. During my family’s routine trips to the Aliquippa Hospital emergency room in the 1960s (With three boys what do you expect?), I recall the posted price for a visit was $18 plus expenses for whatever treatment (x-rays, stitches, cast, et cetera) you needed. Therefore, you could have used emergency room prices from 40 years ago and would still have been higher than the current office visit price Mr. Sainovich alleges.

There are at least three reasons for the high price.

First, emergency rooms are open 24 hours/day. Your doctor’s office isn’t and thus doesn’t need to pay doctors and nurses to be on duty – whether they’re needed or not – for the 128 hours per week the office is closed. Emergency rooms have tons of very expensive equipment. Your doctor’s office doesn’t. Therefore, we should expect the cost for emergency room treatment to cost a lot more than the same treatment in a doctor’s office.

Second, laws require emergency rooms to treat patients whether they can pay or not. Those of who can pay also pay for those who don’t.

Third, I suspect Medicaid, Medicare, or “employer-paid” healthcare insurance pays for most emergency room trips. Third-party payer systems drive up prices because they essentially guarantee we consumers will waste the good or service. One example is people who use emergency rooms for routine treatment.