The Author has often noted that Americans want the best healthcare that someone else will pay for. This mentality is one among several drivers of costs. But there are more.
Americans are not patient people. Fast Food. Faster oil changes. Fast healthcare. Perhaps it is the excess dopamine that sloshes around in our immigrant brains. Maybe it is the fact that we work more hours for less real wages. Or maybe American are just impatient PITAs.
Healthcare is not different. We have urgent care centers, often called "Docs in a box" because of their presence in strip mall box stores. And we have "Detached," or "Free Standing Emergency Rooms."
In an article in Sunday's Fort Wayne Journal Gazette entitled "Detached ER Costs Criticized," the incredibly high costs of these providers is outlined. Tales of $1,518 "facility fees" are derided for simple encounters. And rightly so. Their costs are about ten times higher than what comparable services would cost in a doctor's office. They are similarly inflated relative to Urgent Care Centers.
The "Free-Standing E.R.'s are criticized by both payors for excessive pricing and by hospitals for skimming the privately-insured patients and do not treat the uninsured or government funded patients, patients which hospital-based must often treat.
Locally, however, there are no free-standing E.R.'s. The article recites that one is located in Chesterton, and another was located north of Indianapolis in the more affluent suburb of Fishers, but was recently combined with its mother hospital, St. Vincent.
Just Like Fazoli's pasta, real fast. And unlike Fazoli's pasta, real expensive.
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