Online Public Relations Thoughts

This story is about a woman who went to a hospital for the birth of her son.  There was nothing out of the ordinary in her vaginal delivery but she was instructed when she arrived to enter through the emergency department.  Later when she got the bill from the hospital, it showed she was coded at the highest level of distress causing an inflated bill of thousands of dollars.  That is not only lousy PR, it is fraud.  Hospitals have been out control for decades when it comes to billing.  In fairness to their administrators, there is much they can't charge for and there are deadbeat patients who don't have money to discharge their debts.  So, hospitals have used those who can pay to subsidize those who won't or can't.  It's a bad system and no one deserves to live by it -- not doctors, not administrators, not nurses, not anyone.  It is long past time to clean up billing practices, but it won't happen without relentless public and government pressure.