The Simple Wealth

Carnival of Financial Learning #2 is hosted on Financial Learn, thanks to the host for selecting my post as one of the editor’s picks.

American Economics Blog Carnival - June 1, 2008 is hosted on Struck in Traffic.

Godly Family - June 1, 2008 is hosted on Weekend Kindness.

After the Carnival is Over is hosted on The Next 45 Years.

Live from Waterloo presents… Carnival of Family Life! is hosted on Live from Waterloo.

Carnival of Wealth, Money & Life: June 2nd edition is hosted on How I save Money.

Carnival of Living Cheaply - June is hosted on 2paupers.

Have a great weekend!

After my husband came home from work, we decided to go for a quiet walk, taking the chance of my girl playing with her dear friend next door. But they saw us, so both girls wanted to go for a walk with us as well. Oh, well, we just had to take two giggling girls with us. We walked for a while, and then stopped by a vacant field overlooking the bay, we sat on the grass and talked, and the two girls running in the field playing, finally left us alone, and our baby sat on my lap, nice and quiet, just playing with the grass.

When we were ready to head back home, two girls climbed into the stroller first. Oh, well, baby just had to sit in the basket then.

It was a nice walk.

It takes collective efforts to improve the healthcare system.

I read an news on Friday, May 30th, on SFGate: Consumer Reports rates Bay Area hospitals by Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer, saying that Consumer Reports is expanding their rating service into healthcare. This is a very good news, the healthcare system is so broken here in the States, I’m very glad that Consumer Reports is bringing awareness to this area.

The rating service “judges hospitals by how much care they provide, with facilities termed more aggressive keeping patients hospitalized longer, offering more tests and procedures and spending more for care than those labeled conservative.”

More healthcare is not necessarily better

“More is not always better. When (patients are) in hospitals longer, the longer exposure can lead to hospital-acquired disease; more doctors involved in care can lead to communication problems,” said Dr. John Santa, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center.–from the news article

When my baby was in the Emergency room, a nurse spent about 30 minutes poking needle, making her screaming and crying so miserably, to find a tiny vein for IV, a procedure she didn’t need. More is not always better. A good friend of mine recently took her 15-week-old baby to ER because of fever-she called the advisory nurse first and was told to take her in-they made her baby stay there for 3 nights doing all kinds of tests, including drawing spinal fluid. I was not able to reach her and did not hear from her for a few days. She told me that she was just ‘traumatized’ by all the tests they did to her baby, her baby was fine and the fever went away by itself, it was just a viral fever she got from her sister who was sick a week ago.

Big differences between different hospitals

From my recent emergency room experiences for the incident of my baby’s fall, which resulted medical bills received so far totaled about $16,000 and no actual medical treatment needed( baby’s magical healing power was all she needed), I knew the big differences between Kaiser ER and Children’s Hospital’ ER. To name just one thing: we only saw 1 doctor in Kaiser ER, and several doctors in Children’s Hospital ER. The more doctors show up to talk to you, the more it costs you. Besides, we were told that our baby was going to be watched overnight at the Intensive Care Unit of Children’s Hospital, we did not anticipate that she had to go through the ER procedures again over there, and we had to pay for their ER fees and doctors fees again.

Just knowing the degree of aggressiveness of hospitals is not enough

I did a screenshot of the chart provided in the news article. The above two hospitals, California Pacific Medical Center is less aggressive and yet more expensive. So just knowing the degree of aggressiveness is not enough.

One solution to improve our healthcare system:

Make hospitals disclose their fees publicly

When we go to see dentists, we usually are able to attain pricing first, but why can’t we get pricing first in the hospitals, where costs are so much higher than dental fees?

We need hospitals to disclose their fees publicly so that we can shop around. We need doctors to disclose fees first before proceeding any treatment. If a small dental office could do it, why a humongous structure of a hospital can’t do it? If we knew that to have ambulance to transfer our baby to Children’s Hospital would cost $2727, we would have taken her there ourselves.

Related Posts:

•Carnival of Wealth, Money & Life: June 2nd edition has a great post on the healthcare system: Cash Before Treatment - The Crisis in Medical Care Funding on Physician Entrepreneur.

•Also check out Lynnae’s great post: (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: Health Care

Take a look, we need all the awareness we can get, once again:

It takes collective efforts to improve the healthcare system.

Subscribe to The Simple Wealth to have my newest post delivered to you.