…and how much more do you think that our cost of Hell-Care has gone up since the author wrote this column in 2002? ~ Editor
Government And Medicare Have Driven Up Our Medical Costs.
March 15, 2002 ~ In 1962 I still lived in the Los Angeles area, where I was born and where I grew up, where I attended private school and UCLA. In August, 1962, I moved away from the congestion to my second home, Arizona, where my grandparents had lived and where I had spent much of my childhood. However, the main reason for coming here was that my mother had undergone very serious surgery at the UCLA Medical Center in June, 1962, and I wanted her to be around her mother and sisters.
Two facts need to be established so that the purpose of this article is clear. First, there was no such thing as Medicare in 1962 and most medical and hospital services were affordable to working men for themselves and their families.
Second, I was the sole support of my mother and her only child, she was not covered under my employer’s health benefits at any premium, because a dependent parent wasn’t eligible. As a woman business systems analyst, I was paid about half what the men made for a similar job.
My mother’s medical problem was a puzzle to the neighborhood hospital emergency room, to our family doctor of many years, and I was told by the family doctor that my only chance to save her life was to get her into the UCLA Medical Center.
Broke as the proverbial church mouse, I went to the emergency room and the doctors at the UCLA Medical Center, puzzled by her case, decided to admit her. Frankly, I had no idea how I was going to pay the bill, I decided to tackle that problem later. Saving my mom’s life was all I had on my mind.
At the end of the successful surgery, the total bill was a bit over $2,000 which included 18 days in the hospital, the surgeon, anesthesiologist and lab. By the grace of G-d, when I went to the financial office to make payment arrangements, the lady found out my circumstances and said “wait a moment.” When she came back she asked me how much cash I had. It was all of $40. She said “that will do.”
The rest of the bill was charged to a special account because it is a teaching hospital, and my mother’s case was highly unusual.
Anyway, dividing roughly $2100 total by 18 days will come out to approximately $117 per day for her stay. My salary at the time was about $625 a month, which was ” a good salary for a woman.”
Today I read an article from the online Los Angeles Times about the cost of care at the UCLA Medical Center. The basic cost per day for a sophisticated facility such as UCLA ranges from $2,500 or $3,000 a day just for its basic overhead for a patient.
If my calculations are correct, this is approximately 20 times the amount it cost in 1962. Other costs have gone up around 10 times. My highest salary was only about 5 times the 1962 rate.
In short, today my mother would die. Of course, she did die in 1999 at the age of 97. But she was only 60 years old in 1962, the year the UCLA Medical Center saved her life. She wasn’t even old enough for Medicare if it had been in existence in 1962. I am glad it was not. Under the private system, even though hospital subsidy was used, my mother got care and she lived. Today, she would not be in that position.
Something is very wrong with our health care system in the United States and I believe I know what it is: the government and its cruddy intervention!
Congress is tinkering with the Medicare system again, this time curtailing what it labels as “high tech” procedures on an outpatient basis, including pacemakers. The same type pacemaker as Vice President Dick Cheney recently received. But then, Dick Cheney could corner the market on all the world’s pacemakers with his own cash.
The government has created a dependency on Medicare and other government-subsidized programs by instituting the programs and increasing everyone’s costs for health care far beyond other costs. Government meddling solves few problems while it creates many, and then proceeds to compound the errors.
Is it too much to ask the Congress to rescind all its unconstitutional programs of intervention?
I see nothing in the United States Constitution authorizing the feds to be in the business of housing, medical care, gun control, computer spying or a few dozen other activities. But there they are … involved in everything from birth to death and planning on mandating the latter.
Everything the government touches becomes more costly and less effective.
Doesn’t that send a message to Congress?
Doesn’t it send a message to the people?
Hello? Anyone out there?
March 15, 2002
~ The Author ~
Dorothy Anne Seese was a child actress in Hollywood, most well known for her role as ‘Phronsie Pepper‘ in the Five Little Peppers series of films. Later in life, she became a freelance political writer for Patch Work papers and a regular contributor for the first generation Federal Observer. At the time of the above post, Miss Seese had been retired after 25 years as a legal secretary/assistant and, prior to that, over 15 years as a business systems and procedures analyst. Her hobby was freelance writing. A native of Southern California, Dorothy A. Seese resided in Sun City, Arizona until her death in December of 2015 of cancer.