Medicare emergency room copay series#

And they said - you know, they - the parents sent this to me, saying, how could a Band-Aid cost $629? And I said, I don't know, but I'm going to find out. A Band-Aid was put on the daughter's finger, and they left. Small picture was actually a bill that someone sent me almost three years ago now, where they took their daughter to the emergency room. So I think that is big-picture what got me interested. You can't make a lot of decisions about where you want to go.

It's a place where you can't really shop for health care. There are about 140 million ER visits each year. SARAH KLIFF: You know, I wanted to do this because the emergency room is such a common place where Americans interact with the health care system. Why did you want to do an investigation into emergency room billing? We'll get some updates on the state of Obamacare a little later in the interview. She's also spent years reporting on the battle over health insurance policy.

Medicare emergency room copay series#

She's reported her findings in a series of articles on Vox. She interviewed many of the patients and the people behind the billing. Through crowdsourcing, she collected over a thousand ER bills from around the country. My guest, Sarah Kliff, is a health policy journalist at vox.com who spent over a year investigating why ER bills are so high even with health insurance and why the charges vary so widely from one hospital to the next. One woman who fell and cut her ear and was given an ice pack but no other treatment was billed $5,751. For example, one hospital charged $76 for Bacitracin antibacterial ointment. You wouldn't believe what some emergency rooms charge, or maybe you would because you've gotten bills.