My 93-year-old mother was taken by ambulance to the emergency room last Tuesday in the middle of the night, with acute pneumonia, and died Friday afternoon.
I tell you that partly to explain why I'm being so brief this week and partly to allow me to make a quick point about how much crazy complexity our healthcare system has added in the U.S. We've all become worn down by the cost and complexity, like the proverbial frog in the water that's being brought to a boil, but the issues grab you by the nosehairs when, for instance, you're helping your siblings clean out your mother's apartment and find statements from earlier encounters with the healthcare system.
While I haven't yet seen the bill for my mother's final trip to the hospital, I can imagine what an ambulance ride, a visit to the emergency room and three days in an ICU cost. The bill will be many thousands of dollars, perhaps tens of thousands (covered by insurance, but still...).
By contrast, what was the bill when she broke her leg skiing in 1955? The break was severe enough that she required an operation and spent a night in the hospital. So, the bill mounted all the way up to $46.60.
The telegram she sent my father cost almost as much as the charge for use of an operating room ($3).
How about the bill from 1967, when my sister Katy was born in the same hospital where my mom died? It was a difficult birth, so my mom and sister spent six nights in the hospital. The entire bill came to $419.75.
I'm not dinging the quality of care by any means. The folks at St. Clair Hospital in suburban Pittsburgh were great, to a person, and my mom felt loved and supported as she left this world behind. She died with her intellect and personality intact and had recently spent a great deal of time with her eight kids, her 17 grandchildren and her three great-grandchildren, including at the weddings of two of the grandkids. She just wore out after a series of health problems. Sign me up for that sort of exit when my time comes.
There is just such a stark contrast between my experience of healthcare today and what I saw in those old bills. The one from 1955 was just a page torn from a notepad, on which someone had used a typewriter to check boxes and to add the dollar amounts (the very small dollar amounts). By 1967, the hospital was using a computer, but the bill was almost as simple as the earlier one. Neither showed any of the elaborate coding that comes with today's bills, as hospitals employ small armies of professionals to make sure they maximize what the insurer and patient will pay -- this, even though I'm sure insurance covered those earlier bills, as my mom worked for United Airlines in 1955 and my dad worked at Westinghouse in 1967.
I'm not proposing a solution, at least not today. Today, I'm just passing along what I hope was some intriguing historical perspective from the meticulous files my mom kept -- and to maybe rant a little.
My mom's name was Yvonne, by the way. She lived a long and splendid life. Rest in peace, Mom.
Cheers,
Paul